Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher: Holt, Henry & Company, Inc., 2003
Pages: 304
Rating: Recommend
Synopsis: On October 8, 1871—the same night as the Great Chicago Fire—the lumber town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, was struck with a five-mile-wide wall of flames, borne on tornado-force winds of one hundred miles per hour that tore across more than 2,400 square miles of land, obliterating the town in less than one hour and killing more than two thousand people.
At the center of the blowout were politically driven newsmen Luther Noyes and Franklin Tilton, money-seeking lumber baron Isaac Stephenson, parish priest Father Peter Pernin, and meteorologist Increase Lapham. In Firestorm at Peshtigo, Denise Gess and William Lutz vividly re-create the personal and political battles leading to this monumental natural disaster, and deliver it from the lost annals of American history.
Review: The third time's a charm. I borrowed this book from the library twice in the past year, but always had other books to read. Between reading American Canopy and Under a Flaming Sky, it became apparent that I need to make Firestorm at Peshtigo a priority.Compared to Under a Flaming Sky, this was kind of disappointing as a whole. The authors just did not have the same story telling ability as Daniel James Brown (author of Under a Flaming Sky). Brown went into detail about wildfires in general and also explained fire and burn related deaths. As an all encompassing work, Brown's novel was more informative. Still, Firestorm at Peshtigo is an interesting read. Naturally, there are similarities between the firestorms and events leading up to them, everything from how little was actually known about weather and how fires were simply a part of life in that time and place.
It's a shame that the firestorm at Peshtigo didn't serve as a warning to those in midwest logging towns. Perhaps if attention had been paid, the loss of life and property at Hinckley (Under a Flaming Sky) would have been minimized.
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