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Firestorm at Peshtigo: A Town, Its People, and the Deadliest Fire in American History (Hardcover)

~ William Lutz (Author), (Author) "The working day began before dawn in the gloom in the forest surrounding Peshtigo..." (more)
Key Phrases: woodenware factory, fire whirls, burned district, Green Bay, New York, Luther Noyes (more...)
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In American history books, October 8, 1871, marks the massive fire that consumed Chicago. But as Gess (Good Deeds) and Lutz (Doublespeak) document in this thorough historical narrative, it was also the night a fledgling Wisconsin mining town endured a worse fate a story often overlooked in the annals of fire. Peshtigo, with a population of nearly 2,000, was obliterated in less than an hour that night by a freakish convergence of rampant forest fires and tornado-force winds. Gess and Lutz draw on a wealth of local sources, including diaries, interviews with survivors and newspaper accounts, to enliven their story and forge a cast of main characters. While the authors go into far too much detail in describing the town's founding and its politics, they render a chilling, absorbing account of the hellish events of the night itself, perhaps due to Gess's background as a novelist: " `Faster than it takes to write these words' is the phrase every survivor used. They used it to describe the speed of a fireball hitting a house and setting it into instant flames; they used it to describe the speed with which one house was lifted from its foundation, then thrown through the air `a hundred feet' before it detonated midflight and sent strips of flaming wood flying like shrapnel.... They used it to describe the sight of a small boy, separated from his family, and how he knelt to the ground, crouching in prayer before fire lit his body." The images of the catastrophe are often as unpleasant as they are vivid, but readers will sense that they are necessary and that Gess and Lutz have done an overdue service to those who suffered.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The same day as the Great Chicago Fire, October 8, 1871, a huge conflagration swept through the lumber town of Peshtigo, WI, north of Green Bay on Lake Superior. A summer's drought, a windy day, and possibly a tornado combined to create a firestorm. The fire destroyed 2400 square miles of timber and farmland, demolishing several towns and killing some 2000 people. Peshtigo was remote, and earlier fires had destroyed telegraph lines, so although the scale of the disaster was considerably larger than Chicago's, the loss was relatively little known and quickly forgotten. Novelist Gess (Red Whiskey Blues) and Lutz (English, Rutgers Univ.; Doublespeak) gather information from letters, diaries, interviews, and local newspapers to tell the story of this disaster. In increasingly overheated language, they re-create the politics, the economic realities of a lumber town, and the special meteorological circumstances that combined to destroy an area larger than Rhode Island. Despite the somewhat turgid writing, this work is mildly recommended for libraries with subject collections in fire prevention, disaster recovery, and regional history. Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, KS
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; 1 edition (August 2, 2002)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0805067809
  • ISBN-13: 978-0805067804
  • Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,166,852 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Denise Gess
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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First Sentence:
The working day began before dawn in the gloom in the forest surrounding Peshtigo. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
woodenware factory, fire whirls, burned district, great conflagration, weather observer, army worms, relief committee, burial parties, burial party
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Green Bay, New York, Luther Noyes, Isaac Stephenson, Dunlap House, Sugar Bush, Civil War, Franklin Tilton, Increase Lapham, Peter Pernin, Peshtigo River, Father Pernin, Governor Fairchild, Karl Lamp, Lucius Fairchild, William Ogden, United States, Menominee River, Signal Service, Frances Fairchild, Sam Brookes, Thomas Williamson, Abram Place, Captain Hawley, Captain Langworthy
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30 Reviews
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4.1 out of 5 stars (30 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Hell on Earth, September 5, 2004
By Gary Griffiths (Los Altos Hills, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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While overshadowed by the great Chicago fire which took place on the same day, October 8, 1871, the firestorm that obliterated Peshtigo, Wisconsin was a tragedy of unprecedented proportion - one of those events evoking the reaction "why didn't I know about this"? Aside from the horror of the fire, which literally cannot be described in words (how can one adequately describe the impact of a 1,000 foot-high wall of fire moving at speeds exceeding 100 miles-per-hour), "Firestorm at Peshtigo" offers fascinating insight to life in the north-central timber forests of the mid-nineteenth century, as well as the infant science of meteorology and the physics of a true firestorm. Notwithstanding, the books primary appeal lies in the almost ghoulish detail in which the incomprehensible devastation of the firestorm is drawn. While the final loss of life will never be known, 2,200 deaths is an accepted estimate in a fire that raged over 2,400 square miles - a conflagration so intense that even the soil burned. Given the primitive state of medicine of the day, the limited communications and access to the relatively remote Green Bay area, and the total destruction of the land and infrastructure, one wonders if the survivors of the fire, scarred both physically and mentally by the fire and loss of family and community, weren't the true victims.

In short, a brutally fascinating nugget of American history, proving again that fact is indeed stranger, and in this case, more lurid, than fiction.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Fire in the woods, March 31, 2004
This review is from: Firestorm at Peshtigo: A Town, Its People, and the Deadliest Fire in American History (Paperback)
Galveston, Johnstown, and Peshtigo rank as the greatest `natural' disasters in American history. Excellent books on the first two tragedies are now joined by another great study of the third.

Galveston suffered from a hurricane over one hundred years ago, perhaps 8,000 people died. The dam bursting in Johnston even earlier killed over 2,000 people in western Pennsylvania. The terrible fire that howled through northeastern Wisconsin on October 8, 1871 killed over 1,000 people and, by some estimates, killed more than the flood in Pennsylvania.

Gess and Lutz provide good background to the tragedy. This area of Wisconsin was booming due to the strong demand for lumber and the massive forests that covered the northern half of the state. Times were pretty good and getting better until the summer of 1871, when the lack of rain foretold a horrific fall. In hindsight, the inevitable, terrible combination of wood and fire may have been foreseeable. But not likely preventable.

Fire is an especially nasty force. Combined with extremes in the weather - low pressure, high winds, low humidity, lightning and a tornado - this was an especially pernicious threat and the cause of rapid, terrible death for hundreds and hundreds of poor, unsuspecting, fleeing people, some of them very recent immigrants.

The date of the event, its relatively rural location and the somewhat primitive communication and media of the time makes a complete understanding of the tragedy difficult yet Gess and Lutz work hard and admirably to dig up and re-construct weather reports, personal accounts, old newspapers, and other primary sources of information. There are fifteen pages of detailed and highly readable footnotes and scores of source documents cited.

There is always a tone of overwhelming sadness to such tales. Peshtigo is no exception. But it is fascinating history and well worth reading.

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Fire Every American Should Know About, August 7, 2002
By Alix Fox (California) - See all my reviews
The moment I picked this book up I couldn't put it down again. I felt the same way about THE HOT ZONE and INTO THIN AIR. It's a gripping account of an event every American should know about. In human terms the Peshtigo fire was the most destructive in our history, very like the Civil War was our most destructive war. Gess and Lutz tell this story in a way to make the reader feel like he or she is present as each moment unfolds. My senses were tuned to the taste and smell of the air and as events began to build I too began to wonder where I could find shelter. This was one of America's greatest tragedies but it would be a bigger tragedy if the victims and their story remain obscure. These people deserve the same attention from us as the victims of 9-11. And one more thought. There are monsterous fires in the news every day. They remind us that nature can overpower our most heroic efforts. This account of Pestigo can to a degree
teach us things we need to prevent it from happening again.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling, vivid, important study of deadly fire
This story is a very careful, detailed study of the disastrous fire of Peshtigo, Wisconsin of 1871. The authors carefully and thoroughly gathered detailed and exhaustive... Read more
Published 13 months ago by B. J. Banks

1.0 out of 5 stars Firestorm at Peshtigo
I have never written a review before, but, This is the worst book I have ever read, please save your money and your time.
Published 15 months ago by Shelley S. Walters

5.0 out of 5 stars Riviting read
I could not put this book down and I'm normally a fiction reader. It was engrossing and engaging. I have since looked up everything I can about the Pishtigo fire. Read more
Published on September 1, 2007 by Christine E. Moore

4.0 out of 5 stars catastrophe brought vividly to life on the page.
roughly the first 2/3rds of this book are completely compelling. the time and place are brought to life with complete narrative mastery. Read more
Published on February 11, 2007 by fluffy, the human being.

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting read, but could have been much better
I just finished this book earlier this week and my main reaction is frustration. This is a FASCINATING topic and a sadly forgotten historical tragedy, but this book left me... Read more
Published on November 4, 2005 by S. Heinen

4.0 out of 5 stars Forgotten American Disaster
I bought this book, as I had never read about this disaster. The authors made it very interesting and easy to read. Read more
Published on May 1, 2005 by Michael Makar

4.0 out of 5 stars Nature Gone Mad
I first read the story of the Peshtigo fire in Vincent Gaddis's fortean classic, "Mysterious Lights & Fires". Read more
Published on February 7, 2005 by Mark Newbold

2.0 out of 5 stars Firestorm at Peshtigo-A social history
This book is an good social history of the Peshtigo area in 1871. Given the source material that is available from that time period is an adequate narrative. Read more
Published on January 6, 2005 by yellow echo

3.0 out of 5 stars Should have been a longer book
I expected a book about the firestorm and what happened during that tragedy to the people involved. Instead, I got a history of several wealthy men, some brief information about... Read more
Published on March 25, 2004 by Carol Collins

4.0 out of 5 stars Reads like a novel
I'm a Wisconsin Native, and reside in Chicago. The Chicago fire is very well known and publicized disaster, but the Peshtigo Fire's facts were somewhat of a mystery, thus my... Read more
Published on March 2, 2004 by booksinthecity

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