Stephen Puleo, Molasses Flood Expert, Reading at UMB

Stephen Puleo will be reading from Dark Tide: The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 on Thursday afternoon at 2:30 pm. He'll be in the English lounge of Wheatley Hall on the U-Mass-Boston campus.

Forget what you know about molasses - molasses is fast, as North End residents discovered on January 15, 1919.

The story isn't told as often as it should be - a tank full of 2.3 million gallons of molasses fell and burst open, releasing a 15-foot-high wave of molasses that killed 21 people.

It sounds funny now, but the events surrounding the flood should be familiar. The molasses tank was stored in one place so it could be converted into industrial alcohol that would be part of munitions manufacturing during World War I. To meet deadlines and make money, the US Industrial Alcohol company rushed production of the vat, which collapsed from the molasses.

Corporate greed and negligence helped cause the disaster, the cleanup was difficult, and lawsuits and finger-pointing quickly unfolded. The molasses disaster proves that the gigantic botch of the Hurricane Katrina cleanup is nothing new - it's just the same old stuff on a grander scale.

Historian Stephen Puleo recreates the molasses flood, drawing on primary sources to reveal how people began to suspect problems with the tank and how they reacted when they were sucked down into the sticky stuff.

Puleo's book is a tale of greedy villains trying to make a fast buck and the heroes who tried to save the North End. Maps and old photos help describe the North End at the time, and a photo of how big that tank really was should make you wonder how something that large got built in the area in the first place.

If you have the chance, pick up the book and attend the signing. Puleo is a self-described "molasses geek" who clearly loves his chosen topic. The book should be required reading for anyone living in Boston or anyone wondering how a whole neighborhood can fall apart yet still be able to pick itself up again.

Image of the Dark Tide cover from Amazon.