"Steering mistake. Big explosion. Many dead."

That, I suppose, would be the minimum summary of the Halifax Explosion, the most devastating human-caused catastrophe prior to the use of the first nuclear weapons. Two ships, the Imo and the Mont Blanc, collided in Halifax Harbour, and the collision set off a fire on the Mont Blanc -- which was carrying a cargo of explosives. Her crew soon abandoned her, and she drifted, then blew up all at once, in the harbor, setting off a blast as strong as a small nuclear weapon. Thousands died; tens of thousands were injured (often losing their eyes, since they were most vulnerable) or losing all their possessions.

The fact that the event was so devastating in a way makes it hard to tell. The longest account I've read, Laura M. MacDonald's The Curse of the Narrows, devotes so much time to the individual tragedies that it almost loses track of the actual story -- it is a horrifying recital of families broken and loved ones lost or separated; I eventually overloaded and went numb to further sorrowful tales. Which makes it reasonable that there should be shorter accounts.

There is a limit to how short you can go, though. Proportionally, this tiny book devotes almost as much space as MacDonald to the aftermath, with only a few pages on the failures of communication and the lack of discipline that led to the disaster, and Robinson tells us very little about why the Mont Blanc was able to cause so much destruction. If you really want to know what happened, this book won't be much help.

It's also a singularly poor example of book production. An obvious example is the use of straight quotes (' and ") rather than curled quotes (‘ ’ and “ ”). Ship names are not shown in italic but in ALL CAPS, so the MONT BLANC rather than the Mont Blanc. American ship nomenclature is utterly wrong (e.g. the "U.SS TACOMA (sic.) rather than USS Tacoma or U.S.S. Tacoma). It's both irritating and ugly.

At least there is an index, and there are some decent photos. But if you want the full story of the disaster, you'll need to read something else, and the typesetting is so bad that you might suffer eyestrain as you try to decide whether you actually care. ( )