by Philip L. Fradkin
Hennepin County Library hardcover 349 pages plus endnotes (photos included)
Published: 2005
Genre: Non-fiction, history
I got this book after our book club read The Nature of Fragile Things. That work of historical fiction made me curious about what the 1906 San Francisco disaster was actually like. Fradkin's extensively researched and well-written novel was fascinating, but also a bit daunting. I'm giving up on page 138 out of 346 pages. There are another 72 pages of endnotes, index, etc.
The biggest surprise to me was that they used black powder dynamite to try to create a firebreak! But of course, the explosives just set more fires and spread it faster.
It's not surprising to me that most of what we know about what happened is from upper middle class people. We have very few first person perspectives from poor people or minorities. It's also unsurprising that some engineers had been warning of the potential for disaster and were not heeded. Will we humans ever learn?
The photographs and first person letters were most powerful. I've not been to San Francisco since the 1970s, but this makes me want to go visit!
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