Chicago Death Trap

Veteran journalist Nat Brandt is the author of ten previous books, including The Man Who Tried to Burn New York and The Town That Started the Civil War. The former editor-in-chief of Publishers Weekly, Brandt was also an editor for The New York Times and managing editor of American Heritage. He is the cocreator of the PBS television series Crucible of the Millennium, for which he also served as head of research.

" Chicago Death Trap vividly tells the story of a theater that wasn' t properly designed despite its owner' s public claim that it was " absolutely fireproof." So many safety rules were willfully ignored that in retrospect it is not surprising that the Iroquois disaster remains the deadliest fire in the history of any American city. Brandt . . . deftly lays out the story of a tragedy waiting to happen in a city with a corrupt government and greedy businessmen. . . . In the one hundred years since the fire, the worldwide horror and anger over the Iroquois calamity has faded away. But Brandt' s carefully documented, readable account reminds us what all the shouting was about." - Chicago Sun-Times " This chilling narrative provides a minute-by-minute chronicle of one of the most physically and psychologically devastating disasters of the twentieth century. . . . Packed with eyewitness testimony, this gripping account takes on a sense of dreadful immediacy as theatergoers, players, rescue workers, and victims' family members recount the grisly horrors of that afternoon and its aftermath. This superior piece of historical investigative journalism will keep readers turning the pages until the bitter end." - Booklist " Journalist [Nat] Brandt has written a riveting narrative of a tragedy that affected not only Chicago but the entire world. Public libraries will want to consider this readable book for their disaster collections while academic libraries that collect Chicago materials will find it essential." - Library Journal " Nat Brandt has unearthed a plethora of interesting, off-beat, and unusual tales and facts that balance a methodical minute-by-minute account of the most horrific building fire disaster in Chicago history. . . . The depth of research Brandt brings to the topic is the best compilation of historical material dealing with the fire and its subsequent hearings that I have ever read." - Richard Lindberg, author of Return to the Scene of the Crime: A Guide to Infamous Places in Chicago " [F]ew who pass through [the Ford Center for the Performing Arts Oriental Theater's] doors realize that the building sits on the site of one of the most horrific tragedies in American history: the Iroquois Theatre fire that claimed the lives of six hundred and two people, over two-thirds of them women and children, on the afternoon of December 30, 1903. As Nat Brandt' s fascinating narrative reveals, this is a multilayered story that illuminates many aspects of life in the city and on the stage." - Perry R. Duis and Cathlyn Schallhorn, from the Introduction