Customer Reviews

Disaster! The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The title says it all. Kurzman is a sensation story writer. While the book itself may be a good read in the sense of historical fiction, I would not count on it to provide any insight.

On the positive, his bibliography is pretty good, and it may be that his popular press editors dumbed down the text in order to make it more accessable to the general public. BUT the section on the bubonic plague has enough problems (confusing U. S. Secretary of the Treasury Lyman Gage with California Governor Henry T.Gage, for example) to weed it out as a reliable secondary source. Kurzman claims that the first plague outbreak was caused by rats transported by ships from China carrying Chinese sex slaves, that San Francisco mayor Eugene Schmitz had a stake in the slave trade, and that he covered up the second outbreak of bubonic plague to protect his business interests. Kurzman goes on to claim that the second outbreak was brought on by infected rats fleeing from Chinatown into the rest of the city. This is all a little too speculative and sensational for my taste. Since there is no evidence, either in his footnotes, nor in the literature I know of, which would back up either allegation, I'm afraid that I cannot endorse his assertions. That being the case, it casts the rest of the book in the same weak light.

There isn't a lot of new ground covered in this book. People interested in this period of San Francisco history would be better served by reading from Kurzman's bibliography rather than relying on Kurzman to filter their history. On the San Francisco graft trials, no better book exists than Franklin Hichborn's "The System." For a revisionist view of the earthquake and fire, try "Denial of Disaster" by Gladys Hansen.

mms, Grad. Student, Department of History, San Jose State University

"Disaster" was a disappointment for me, mainly because I'd greatly enjoyed two of author Dan Krzman's previous books, "Fatal Voyage," and "Left to Die," about the U.S.S. Indianapolis and U.S.S. Juneau disasters, respectively. Those books, in addition to being informative history, tell great stories. Alas, "Disatser" makes a similar attempt in the storytelling department but fails. The book contains plenty of facts and first hand accounts of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, but it is strangely disjointed. There are so many stories of numerous survivors interwoven together that individually they are hard to follow. And since the book checks in at a fairly brief 256 pages of text, each snippet of each story usually gets only a couple of paragraphs before moving on. Together, the stories blend into a rather shapeless mass that all start to sound alike. Kurzman would have been better served to tell his story from the larger perspective and using individual stories where they fit in. This approach served David McCullough extremely well in his excellnt "The Johnstown Flood," which serves as the ideal model for this type of book.

Overall, if you are interested in the subject matter or are a disaster buff, this book should be worthwhile with the above caveats. If you are a casual reader, you may want to consider taking a pass on this one.

Disaster seems to want to be a lively, fiction-style approach to the events, but suffers from a lack of depth and from the absence of any usable central characters. So we don't quite get a point of view strong enough to paint a compelling subjective experience, nor enough depth and detail to create a strong objective study.

Instead we land somewhere in between. Not a bad book, though some of the historic conclusions seem open to debate. It does have some nice little anecdotes, and can be read cover to cover in a light afternoon, so this might make a good overview or starting point for someone approaching the subject. Young readers would also find this handy.

If you want to see this type of historical writing done well, pick up David McCullough's book about the Johnstown Flood.

I am a former history major at Stanford University, a Bay Area native who now lives in the Midwest, someone who reveres San Francisco history. I have been meaning to write this review for a long time. The NY Times was brutal in its review of this book, which prompted Mr. Kurtzman to write back, attacking the reviewer, who called this book completely episodic. It is that and then some. I have not read Mr. Kurtzman's other books, but after this effort, I'm not likely to. This book is just one lazy, meandering vignette after another, with no structure, theme, or cohesion. Even the title, "Disaster", is a blatant use of Glady's Hansen's brilliant, seminal work "Denial of Disaster." I knew I was in trouble when I read the credits in the front: Kurzman refers to the great historian Malcolm Barker, author of Three Fearful Days, as "Malcolm Walker." The use of other people's structure and story lines is appalling. In their ground-breaking 1971 book The San Francisco Earthquake, Max Witts and Thomas Gordon open with a description of Enrico Caruso coming to San Francisco, fighting with his co-star, escaping Mount Vesuvius, and lines like "Caruso decided he would need more protection than the insurance policy...He bought himself a revolver and fifty rounds of ammunition...By the time the train reached San Francisco, Caruso had become a passable gun handler." Now look what Kurtzman does on Page One. After telling us about Caruso's fight with his costar, his escaping Mount Vesuvius, etc.; he writes "And so he purchased a pistol and fifty bullets...And while crossing the western plains, he spent his time learning how to load the gun and draw it with a flick of his wrist." Kurzman virtually duplicates the opening chapter from someone else's book, then proceeds to tell us the almost identical tales of the identical characters -- Abe Ruef, Dennis Sullivan --as exist in the Gladys Hansen and Thomas/Witt books. I could not find a single fact that was new and insightful, other than Kurzman's claim that 10,000 died -- a statement he fails to corroborate -- though all of us who have studied it know that the official death count of about 500 is a huge lie. I have read virtually every book on this subject, and this is emphatically the worst. Try "Denial of Disaster", or "Three Fearful Days", or "The Great San Francisco Earthquake, or even James Dalessandro's marvelous novel, 1906, which paints an extraordinary picture of how the military ran about shooting suspected looters and dynamiting the place to oblivion. I tried to find something redeeming in "Disaster." I fear that only its name fit that effort.

This book could have been a masterpiece. Parts of the book portray the compelling human drama of the San Francisco earthquake and fire as if you were there. Other parts are disjointed and confusing. The problem is that the author is unable to connect these seemingly random human events into a coherent whole. In all fairness, perhaps this is impossible to do given the complexity of the event. It doesn't help, however, that the author completely gets the geology of the earthquake wrong at the very beginning of the book. In spite of all these criticisms, this book is worth reading. In several chapters, the author accomplishes the impossible. He is able to describe the experiences of individuals, combine them to make a convincing whole, and make you feel as if you were there! If only the whole book could have been like that.

I would have given this book 5 stars but in the end I felt the author just didn't put enough heart into the telling. Surprising because the first book I read by this author, "Fatal Voyage" was a superb telling of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis with much more body to the characters and their story, I was expecting the same with this telling of the devastation of San Francisco by quake and fire, but alas... Even so it's worth a read if you're interested in the city's history, the book serves honorably as an overview of this chapter in San Francisco's past, but if you're looking for gripping personal tales, it's just shake and bake basics.

I was curious to compare the events in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake with the New Orleans Katrina disaster. I wasn't looking for a deeply researched history book, so this one answered my questions adequately. The author doesn't load you up with knowledge about earthquake faults and the scientific background behind plate tectonics. This is mostly a collection of anecdotes from people who lived through the earthquake, the events they experienced and observed, and some background on the political and business climate in which it all occurred.

And that was enough to demonstrate how little we humans have learned about preparing for disaster in the past hundred years. Let's see:

* The fire chief had been complaining for years that the city's water system was inadequate to cope with a major event. That was beginning to be addressed -- in fact there was a hearing about improving the water supply for fireman on the day the earthquake hit -- but the politicos felt the money could be better invested elsewhere. (Gosh, does that sound familiar?)

* Many of the responses from the political people first on the scene were accomplished in a CYA manner. The mayor, for example, was about to be indicted for corruption (and eventually he was, after the earthquake and fire), so his first actions were to secure political support.

* Poor communication stymied relief efforts. In some cases, food and clothing arrived but the distribution process wasn't in place.

* Also, the politicians tried to erase the "bad PR" after the fact, by insisting the body count was much lower than it was (the official numbers were in the hundreds, while on-the-scene reports indicated that many people were shot as looters and the real numbers were in the many-thousands).

* The events brought out the best and worst of people, from strangers who would help one another to police who turned to looting.

All of these sound very familiar, don't they?

The actual events were eerie. I've been in San Francisco often enough to recognize street names and landmarks, and I've heard some of the "society" names often enough to know to whom they were referring. If you've visited the City as a tourist a few times, I'm sure it'd give you another way to appreciate its past.

The book could have used another pass through by a good editor. There are some weird typos and unclear passages. And, as another reviewer said, this is less a history book with deep research and billions of citations than it is a set of anecdotes based on what the author could find at the time. Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading it, and it did cover the info I'd been interested in learning about.

The format that Mr. Kurzman chose for this book works very well. The book is only about 250 pages long and is divided into 41 brief chapters. Mr. Kurzman darts back and forth, telling you about what is happening to various people that he has chosen to zero in on. For the most part, these are "just common people" but he also tells you about Enrico Caruso and John Barrymore, who happened to be in the city at the time of the earthquake and fire. Caruso and Barrymore actually provide some comic relief from the tragic events described throughout most of the book. Caruso was supposed to have gone to Naples to perform, but went to San Francisco with the Metropolitan Opera Company instead. He had heard frightening tales about the "wild west" and so he bought a gun, learned how to use it, and kept it concealed under his clothing- "just in case"! Mount Vesuvius erupted at this time and Caruso thanked his lucky stars that he had chosen to go to San Francisco instead....well, he thanked his lucky stars for awhile, anyway. Barrymore had signed on to make a theatrical tour of Australia. After he thought about it, he regretted this decision and even after the earthquake hit he spent most of his time hoping he'd miss the boat to Australia. But, again, the book mostly describes the destruction of property and the loss of lives that accompanied the earthquake and fire. The rapid cutting from chapter to chapter effectively recreates the confusion and panic that enveloped the city. Mr. Kurzman widens the scope of the book to include information about political corruption, which contributed to the devastation. For example, the chief of the fire department had been pushing for new equipment but the mayor wasn't interested in spending money on something that couldn't provide him with kickbacks. Additionally, construction contractors tried to cut corners by using substandard mortar, which increased the number of buildings that just disintegrated during the earthquake. Mr. Kurzman writes about the people who charged vastly inflated prices for food and transportation during the crisis, and he also reports on the members of the militia who looted and even murdered when they were supposed to be upholding the law. Desperate homeowners, who knew that insurance wouldn't cover damage caused by earthquakes, set fire to their own homes when they began to be fear that Mother Nature wouldn't do the job herself. One image that has remained with me is of the 3 story hotel that collapsed into a huge crack in the street. The bottom 2 stories wound up underground and many people drowned in the water pouring out of broken water mains. Only the people on the 3rd floor, now at street level, could crawl to safety. Despite advances in construction and fire prevention and containment, could anything nearly this bad ever happen again? Unfortunately, we may find out. Mr. Kurzman quotes geologists who estimate that a quake of this magnitude could be expected to occur in the SF Bay area approximately every 60-100 years. 2006 will be the 100th anniversary of the great fire and quake...

I was starting from scratch in my knowledge about the San Francisco earthquake when I began this book. What I especially enjoyed was the number of human interest stories regrading different people such as future baseball pitcher, but then a ten year old, Del Crespi, (not to be confused with Cardinals' infielder Frank "Creepy" Crespi), searching in vain for his beloved girl friend Lillian and singer Enrico Caruso looking forward to reading the newspapers' reviews of his singing performance shortly before the quake struck. Mansions and other temporal possessions of the wealthy were destroyed and many individuals resorted to looting. Explosives were used to create a gap wide enough where fires would not be able to "jump" over. Human nature demonstrates itself both for good and for evil during calamities and this was shown in numerous cases throughout the book. Ethnic groups such as the Chinese and whites both realized they were in this problem together, and the result was a strengthening of their shared cultures. I especially enjoyed the number of individual human nature stories provided by the author.

Disaster! is a well-written, fast-moving look at the experience of many lives (famous and otherwise) in the face of one of the greatest disasters in U.S. history. The book looks at the unconventional frontier spirit of California's greatest city of the time, spoiled by the graft and corruption of past business and political figures and the current administration of Mayor Schmitz and city boss Abraham Reuf, and tarnished in reputation by the red light districts of Barbary Coast among others, yet loved dearly by most of its residents. It would burn for 74 hours and then, after it burned itself out, mercilessly came the rain. The spirit of optimism was shaken by the experience, but was definitely not destroyed as the city celebrated its rebuilding only nine years later.

The book reveals the good and the bad brought out of people by the disaster. As one witness stated, "I had a Catholic Priest kneel by me in the park...and prayed to the holy Father for relief for my pain and ease to my body. I saw a poor woman, barefoot, told to 'Go to Hell and be glad of it,' for asking for a glass of milk at a dairyman's wagon; she had in her arms a baby with its legs broken" (pg. 149). In many cases, the primitive frontier life returned to the Bay just following the quake. Some militiamen took Mayor Schmitz's proclamation that looters should be shot on sight to the extreme, killing many civilians for trivial matters. In other cases, neighbors of different ethnic and social groups came together-made equal by their loss. One survivor's memory of a free spree at a candy store before it was to be dynamited in an attempt to stop the fire's path carried with him eighty years (pg. 138).

The people whose stories are told include a 10-year old future Major League pitcher who searches frantically for the love of his life; a couple separated and presumed dead by neighbors yet never giving up the search for each other; another couple who insisted on going ahead with their wedding plans despite the chaos around them; the renown prima donna tenor Enrico Caruso who thought he had avoided disaster by postponing plans to go to Naples just before the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius; Mayor Schmitz who the very day of the earthquake was to go to a hearing for a case of corruption against him; the head of the Bank of Italy (later the Bank of America) risking life and limb to save his customer's deposits from his doomed building-the list goes on.

The stories are told sporadically in 41 short chapters (some as short as three pages). Some of the stories are almost too spread out. The story of actor John Barrymore's experience, for example, was introduced on page 13 and did not continue until page 166. This style makes it a little difficult to follow at times, but I think it is still better than completing one story and then moving on to the next making the book painfully redundant. Each story is unique enough to jog the memory after a few lines. The book has source notes, a list of people whose experiences are described, a map of the San Francisco area, and a lengthy bibliography. I enjoyed reading this book and recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.