The Sinking of the Eastland: America's Forgotten Tragedy/Trapped: The 1909 Cherry Mine Disaster

Beginning of article

The Sinking of the Eastland: America's Forgotten Tragedy. By Jay Bonansinga (New York: Citadel Press, 2004. Pp. viii, 280. Cloth, $21.95).

Trapped: The 1909 Cherry Mine Disaster. By Karen Tintori (New York: Atria Books, 2002. Pp. xiv, 273. $25.00 hardback, Paper, $14.00).

Author Jay Bonansinga quips that "history is written not on the page, but around the kitchen table." (vii) Both he and Karen Tintori relied on the remembrances of descendants, oral histories of participants, newspaper accounts, and public records in order to create narrative nonfiction about two of Illinois's greatest disasters.

In Trapped we learn that Tintori's grandfather survived the nation's …