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The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism (2017)

di John U. Bacon

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3481773,726 (4.04)31
"After steaming out of New York City on December 1, 1917, laden with a staggering three thousand tons of TNT and other explosives, the munitions ship Mont-Blanc fought its way up the Atlantic coast, through waters prowled by enemy U-boats. As it approached the lively port city of Halifax, Mont-Blanc's deadly cargo erupted with the force of 2.9 kilotons of TNT -- the most powerful explosion ever visited on a human population, save for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mont-Blanc was vaporized in one fifteenth of a second; a shockwave leveled the surrounding city. Next came a thirty-five-foot tsunami. Most astounding of all, however, were the incredible tales of survival and heroism that soon emerged from the rubble. This is the unforgettable story told in John U. Bacon's The Great Halifax Explosion: a ticktock account of fateful decisions that led to doom, the human faces of the blast's 11,000 casualties, and the equally moving individual stories of those who lived and selflessly threw themselves into urgent rescue work that saved thousands. The shocking scale of the disaster stunned the world, dominating global headlines even amid the calamity of the First World War. Hours after the blast, Boston sent trains and ships filled with doctors, medicine, and money. The explosion would revolutionize pediatric medicine; transform U.S.-Canadian relations; and provide physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who studied the Halifax explosion closely when developing the atomic bomb, with history's only real-world case study demonstrating the lethal power of a weapon of mass destruction."--Dust jacket.… (altro)
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This book can be divided into four parts: the lead-up to the disaster, the disaster, the immediate afterwards, and the long-term afterwards. The first part, the lead-up, is quite repetitive, with facts and elements repeated a minimum of three times (per my personal counting). Don't let this stop you! The rest of the book is fantastic, by turns horrifying and sad and uplifting, and at every point fascinating. ( )
  blueskygreentrees | Oct 16, 2023 |
First sentence: On Thursday, December 1, 2016, the people of Boston slogged through a drizzly day with temperatures in the 40s--neither fall nor winter, the kind of cold that gets deep in your bones and stays there.

Premise/plot: Narrative nonfiction covering the Halifax Disaster of December 1917. The book provides context, context, more context. But there does seem to be a point--not details for the sake of details. For example, it provides several chapters on the history of Halifax--including Halifax's complex relationship with the United States. There's also context about the First World War (aka the War to End all Wars or The Great War). The book chronicles the disaster through the eyes of a dozen or so people.

My thoughts: I definitely appreciated this one more than the first book I read on this topic. The first book I read, Shattered City, was a bit dry at times and the book wasn't always great at connecting the dots and showing the relevance or significance of the facts it was sharing.

I don't know exactly why this topic/subject has become of interest to me. It was in a fiction book--Christian fiction--book I read earlier this year. I then came across a movie on Tubi. I'll probably read more on the subject--fiction or nonfiction. ( )
  blbooks | Sep 26, 2023 |
I found several erroneous statements in the book - frank contradictions. This may be accounted for by poor editing. Unfortunately, I have found this to be the case with other Bacon books which is concerning. I was interested in the story of the Halifax explosion and this was the first book I found. I do wonder to what extent the author the author took the liberty to fictionalize some content since there are "statements" made by people who did not survive the blast and for whom no one would have known what they were thinking.

Lastly, the title is totally misleading. At no point did "treachery" enter the picture.

I will likely read another account of the Halifax explosion to get a more objective telling of the history. ( )
  Kimberlyhi | Apr 15, 2023 |
Outstanding non-fiction about a disastrous explosion in Halifax in 1917. On December 6, 1917, the freighter Mont-Blanc arrived in Halifax Harbor, Nova Scotia, laden with six million pounds of explosives destined for the trenches of the Great War in France. The Mont-Blanc collided with the Imo, resulting in a fire, which eventually caused the explosives to detonate, devastating the surrounding area. It was, at the time, the most powerful blast ever unleashed, until eclipsed by the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. John U. Bacon tells the story of how this disaster occurred and what happened in its aftermath. It is a story of almost unbelievable heroism and people rising to the occasion by altruistically helping each other through the tragedy.

The author employs several techniques which bring the story to life. First, he follows the lives of several people who were impacted by the event. I cared about these people and hoped they made it through the blast. Second, he tells the history of United States-Canadian relations, which have not always been as cordial as they are now. Third, he outlines an almost a minute-by-minute reconstruction of the circumstances leading to the explosion. Taken together, they make for riveting reading.

Once he lays the foundation for the events that would cause the explosion, Bacon turns to a mini-biography of Joseph Barrs, who volunteered for the Canadian army in World War I. He was injured severely in battle and spent six months in a body cast, returning to the Halifax area struggling to walk and suffering from what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder. He feels he has lost his direction in life, and the way in which he rediscovers a sense of purpose is directly related to the actions taken in response to the Halifax explosion. I found this a very powerful way to tell the story of how the explosion connects to what was happening with the Great War overseas and felt invested in his plight.

The author paints a vivid picture of what was occurring in the city at the time, a seemingly ordinary day, with men working, children on their way to school, families eating breakfast. People were curious about the burning ship and were coming down to the pier to watch, unaware of its dangerous cargo. The author tells many individual stories of what happened to the people and how the community responded, eventually receiving assistance from many places, including Boston, where they had an emergency preparedness plan already established. Just when you think circumstances can’t get much worse for the people of Halifax, they do. In the wake of the explosion, a massive tsunami is generated. The next day, as people were attempting to recover survivors, the city is hit with the worst blizzard in a decade.

This story deserves to be more well-known than it is, and I very much enjoyed learning about it. My only quibbles with the book, and they are minor, is that the author sometimes includes superfluous or repetitive information and I would have liked to hear more about what the captain and crew faced afterward. Overall, I found this book fascinating and highly recommend it to anyone interested in World War I, the history of man-made disasters, or stories of tragic events that bring out the best of human nature. ( )
  Castlelass | Oct 30, 2022 |
This might have been a better book had it been written by Erik Larsen, but it was a good read anyway. I just wrote a lengthy, detailed review, but GR decided to delete it before I posted, so I’m going to recap just the highlights:

The Great Halifax Explosion was the largest man-made explosion prior to Hiroshima. It occurred in December 2017 as the result of the collision of an overloaded munitions-laden ship hoping to join a convoy to Europe in Halifax with an empty ship headed to NYC to pick up relief supplies destined for Belgium. I was completely unaware of this event prior to hearing of this book, but then again, we Americans are woefully uneducated on many things related to WWI (even if we’ve read a few books).

The author tries to do three things in the book: Describe the circumstances leading up to the collision; share the stories of individual Haligonians (yes, that’s what residents of Halifax are called) before and after the event; and applaud the local, national and international efforts to save lives and reconstruct the city afterwards.

IMO, Bacon spends too much time on those personal stories. Some are interesting (Ernest Barss in particular), but there is so much of it that it causes the centre of the book to drag.

The story behind the international aid, particularly that coming from Boston, has a history that is worth noting as it reflects the often testy relationship between the US and Canada prior to their becoming allies in WWI. Personally, I found myself contemplating the oft-cited comment that Boston and Halifax were more similar than they were different, and contrasting that with the less-enthusiastic relief efforts for recent disasters in Haiti and Puerto Rico. Those locations are quite “alien” to most Americans; did that effect the extent of the aid response? (Don’t get me started on the whole FEMA-responsibility-to-Puerto-Rico question.)

I was startled that Bacon seemed to lose interest in the two ships and their crews following the event. By the way, the immediate aftermath provides a Spock-in-the-radiation-chamber moment. Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one? We probably all see ourselves as the heroes who put others first, but I wonder whether we would.

I’ve read that this book is actually pretty controversial since it incorporates a great deal of content from a book by Janet Kitz, Shattered City. I haven’t read that book so I can’t weigh in on that. All I can comment on is my reaction to this book as I read it.

One last comment: Another book, another personal connection. It turns out the district of Halifax most affected by the explosion was named, not for the area outside London that is home to Kew Gardens (gorgeous!), but for the city I now call home, Richmond, VA. (Cotton from Richmond was shipped to Halifax for processing.)

I enjoyed it. A 3.5 because I think it could be leaner, but easily rounded up to a 4. ( )
  BarbKBooks | Aug 15, 2022 |
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To the memory of Wally and Helen Graham,
my beloved Canadian grandparents,
who first told me this remarkable story,
and the good people of Halifax
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On Thursday, December 1, 2016, the people of Boston slogged through a drizzly day with temperatures in the 40s - neither fall nor winter, the kind of cold that gets deep in your bones and stays there
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"After steaming out of New York City on December 1, 1917, laden with a staggering three thousand tons of TNT and other explosives, the munitions ship Mont-Blanc fought its way up the Atlantic coast, through waters prowled by enemy U-boats. As it approached the lively port city of Halifax, Mont-Blanc's deadly cargo erupted with the force of 2.9 kilotons of TNT -- the most powerful explosion ever visited on a human population, save for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mont-Blanc was vaporized in one fifteenth of a second; a shockwave leveled the surrounding city. Next came a thirty-five-foot tsunami. Most astounding of all, however, were the incredible tales of survival and heroism that soon emerged from the rubble. This is the unforgettable story told in John U. Bacon's The Great Halifax Explosion: a ticktock account of fateful decisions that led to doom, the human faces of the blast's 11,000 casualties, and the equally moving individual stories of those who lived and selflessly threw themselves into urgent rescue work that saved thousands. The shocking scale of the disaster stunned the world, dominating global headlines even amid the calamity of the First World War. Hours after the blast, Boston sent trains and ships filled with doctors, medicine, and money. The explosion would revolutionize pediatric medicine; transform U.S.-Canadian relations; and provide physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who studied the Halifax explosion closely when developing the atomic bomb, with history's only real-world case study demonstrating the lethal power of a weapon of mass destruction."--Dust jacket.

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