Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919

“The definitive account of America’s most fascinating and surreal disaster.”—John Marr, San Francisco Bay Guardian

“Narrated with gusto…[Puleo’s] enthusiasm for a little-known catastrophe is infectious.”—The New Yorker

“Compelling…Puleo has done justice to a gripping historical story.”—Ralph Ranalli, Boston Globe

A 100th anniversary edition with a new afterword of the only adult book on one of the odder disasters in US history—documenting the greed, disregard for poor immigrants, and lack of safety standards that led to it

Around noon on January 15, 1919, a group of firefighters was playing cards in Boston’s North End when they heard a tremendous crash. One firefighter jumped up from his chair to look out a window—“Oh my God!” he shouted to the other men, “Run!”

A 50-foot-tall steel tank filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses had just collapsed on Boston’s waterfront, disgorging its contents in a 15-foot-high wave that traveled at 35 miles per hour. It demolished wooden homes, even the brick fire station. The number of dead wasn’t known for days.

Dark Tide tells the story of the molasses flood in its full historical context. Tracing the era from the tank’s construction in 1915 through the multiyear lawsuit that followed the disaster, and drawing from long-lost court documents, fire department records, and newspaper accounts, Stephen Puleo uses the gripping drama of the molasses flood to examine the sweeping changes brought about by World War I, Prohibition, the anarchist movement, immigration, and the expanding role of big business in society.

It’s also a chronicle of the courage of ordinary people, from the firemen caught in an unimaginable catastrophe to Judge Hugh Ogden, the soldier-lawyer who presided over the lawsuit against USIA with heroic impartiality.