Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror

Put together at speed in 1906, this was among the first book-length accounts of the earthquake and fire that destroyed San Francisco. Trumbull White and Richard Linthicum gathered first-person accounts from survivors and rescuers along with press dispatches, and Bishop Samuel Fallows edited the result and supplied its introduction. The narrative covers the buildings that came down on the morning of April 18, the broken water mains that left firefighters with nothing, and the dynamite used to blast firebreaks through whole blocks. Later chapters turn to the eruption of Vesuvius that same spring and to a long roll of earlier catastrophes: Pompeii, Lisbon, Krakatoa, Johnstown, Galveston. The rush left marks, including two chapters that break off mid-sentence, but that is part of the appeal. This is 1906 talking about itself, before the story settled into legend.