San Francisco is burning: the untold story of the 1906 earthquake and fires by Dennis Smith. 294 p.
There's some interesting stuff in this book, mainly about the military response to the fires--they spent a lot of time dynamiting and setting off black powder charges, which caused many more fires than they stopped, but the army didn't help fight fires at all. (The navy, particularly one lieutenant, did fire-fight, and helped save the wharves.) They did spend a lot of time forcing people to abandon their houses at bayonet-point, instead of letting them remain to fight the fires, which the author clearly thinks should have happened. He also alleges that the military shot a bunch a people. We get a lot of detail about fire-fighting, some description of the political and social situation both before and after the fires--especially about the graft trials--and some detail about individuals who were affected. The book is badly organized, though, and I found the multitude of individuals introduced at the beginning more confusing than anything--at least one of them isn't mentioned again for nearly 200 pages. Also, I found the writing style incredibly annoying, especially when the author kept describing what certain people were thinking right before they died. I'm looking forward to reading a different book on this topic.
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