The challenge when writing history is to break the glass that separates us from the past. To connect somehow with those who lived before us and turn them back into people — not flat abstractions in funny clothes.
The glass-breaking moment for me, when I set out long ago to write a history of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire — the 1911 industrial disaster that shaped the politics of New York and later the entire nation — came when I learned that some of the victims, moments from death yet cheerfully unawares, were singing at the end of their workday. “Every Little Movement,” a hit Broadway show tune, was their equivalent of the latest from Taylor Swift. Some joke or passing remark or reference to a boyfriend had reminded one of them of the lyrics, and when she launched in, others joined her, as happy humans often do.
