The loss experienced on September 11, of course, was unprecedented in New York - and American - history. However, there was one June day nearly 100 years earlier that saw over 1,000 lives lost on a single day. It is a travesty in and of itself that a definitive book about this horrific day was never written. Until now, that is. Historian Edward T. O'Donnell (who previously wrote the valuable "1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Irish American History") explores one of New York's greatest disasters in "Ship Ablaze: The Tragedy of the Steamboat General Slocum." It was meant to be a relaxing day at sea, when over 1,300 Lower East Siders boarded the General Slocum on June 15, 1904. The steamship was planning a leisurely trip from Manhattan to Long Island Sound. But a fire swiftly erupted. By the time the ship docked safely, 1,021 (mostly German-Americans) had died. It was New York's deadliest tragedy prior to September 11. O'Donnell excellently uses firsthand accounts of the disaster to explore why the death toll was so high, the city's response, and why this event was so easily forgotten. Following this disaster, the German-American neighborhood more or less evaporated, moving uptown, in an effort to put this tragedy behind them. O'Donnell finally gives this tragedy the treatment it deserves. ($24.95 / 332 pages / Broadway Books)