Stock photo. Cover may not represent actual copy or condition available.
Firestorm at Peshtigo
A Town, Its People, and the Deadliest Fire in American History
by William Lutz ; Denise Gess
ISBN: 0805067809
ISBN-13: 9780805067804
Format: Hardcover
|
Customer Reviews
Review this book!
Media Reviews
"Gess and Lutz do an excellent job of telling the personal stories of numerous town inhabitants...Yet they know well the main player was the firestorm...."
-- Kirkus
Bibliographic Details
Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
Published date: 2002
Edition: 1th edition
Size: 6.25 x 9.5 inches
Weight: 1.25 pounds
Pages: 267
Publisher's Notes
A riveting account of a monster firestorm -- the rarest kind of catastrophic fire -- and the extraordinary people who survived its wrath.
On October 8, 1871 -- the same night as the Great Chicago Fire -- an even deadlier conflagration was sweeping through the lumber town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, 260 miles north of Chicago. The five-mile-wide wall of flames, borne on tornado-force winds of 100 miles per hour, tore across more than 2,400 square miles of land, obliterating Peshtigo in less than one hour and killing more than 2,000 people.
Firestorm at Peshtigo places the reader at the center of the blow-out. Through accounts of newspaper publishers Luther Noyes and Franklin Tilton, lumber baron Isaac Stephenson, parish priest Father Peter Pernin, and meteorologist Increase Lapham -- the only person who understood the unusual and dangerous nature of this fire -- Denise Gess and William Lutz re-create the story of the people, the politics, and the place behind this monumental natural disaster, delivering it from the lost annals of American history.
Drawn from survivors' letters, diaries, interviews, and local newspapers, Firestorm at Peshtigo tells the human story behind America's deadliest wildfire.
Other Editions
Similar books
Five Points
by Tyler Anbinder
Details the notorious neighborhood that was once filled with gaming dens, bordellos, dirty streets, and tenements, that welcomed such visitors as Charles Dickens and Ambraham Lincoln, and brings to light the hidden world that existed beneath the squalor--a world that invented tap dancing and hosted the prize-fight of the century.
Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro-Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana 1718-1868
by Caryn Cosse Bell
Creating an Old South
by Edward E. Baptist
Set on the antebellum southern frontier, this book uses the history of two counties in Florida's panhandle to tell the story of the migrations, disruptions, and settlements that made the plantation South. Soon after the United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1821, migrants from older southern states began settling the land that became Jackson and Leon Counties. Slaves, torn from family and community, were forced to carve plantations from the woods of Middle Florida, while planters and less wealthy white men battled over the social, political, and economic institutions of their new society. Conflict between white men became full-scale crisis in the 1840s, but when sectional conflict seemed to threaten slavery, the whites of Middle Florida found common ground. In politics and everyday encounters, they enshrined the ideal of white male equality--and black inequality. To mask their painful memories of crisis, the planter elite told themselves that their society had been transplanted from older states without conflict. But this myth of an "Old," changeless South only papered over the struggles that transformed slave society in the course of its expansion. In fact, that myth continues to shroud from our view the plantation frontier, the very engine of conflict that had led to the myth's creation.
Raw Frontier
by Keith Guthrie
White Man's Wicked Water
by William E. Unrau
In White Man's Wicked Water William Unrau tells the compelling story of how an alcohol-sodden society introduced drink to the Indians. That same society then instituted futile policies to control the flow of alcohol to tribes who, as one superintendent put it, "have not the moral force to resist temptation". Unrau dispels that racial-deficiency theory and debunks the belief that prohibition was carried out by well-intended reformers. Scholars have often viewed the sale of alcohol to Native Americans as a ploy by Euro-Americans to trick them into unfair land and trade deals. But Unrau makes it clear that alcoholic consumption by Native Americans was the inevitable consequence of cultural confluence, not of conscious white subversion. Indian inebriation in the nineteenth century, he shows, essentially mimicked the habits of white Americans who - spurred on by prevailing attitudes and federal law - were aspiring to integrate the natives into the cultural mainstream.
|
|
Ready to buy this book?
Below are all of the copies of 0805067809 we currently have available for purchase, sorted by lowest price first. If you would like to refine your search, use the advanced options in the search box above.
|
|
1)
|
Firestorm at Peshtigo: A Town, Its People, and the Deadliest Fire in American History
William Lutz, Denise Gess
Henry Holt and Co. Used - Acceptable. Former Library book. Binding is slightly damaged and/or book has some loose pages. No missing pages. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! ( more information) Offered by Better World Books (United States)
Favorite bookseller : you've previously added this bookseller to your favorites list.
|
|
|
3)
|
Firestorm at Peshtigo: a Town, Its People, and the Deadliest Fire in American History
Lutz, William
New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2002 Good in Very Good jacket Very Good in Very Good jacket 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.0 inches. Condition very good, DJ very good, B&W photos starting at page 140, many passages have been underlined or marked on the side. 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.... First Edition. Hardcover. Good/Very Good. ( more information) Offered by Jen's Books (United States)
Favorite bookseller : you've previously added this bookseller to your favorites list.
|
|
|
5)
|
Firestorm at Peshtigo: A Town, Its People, and the Deadliest Fire in American History
Lutz, William and Denise Gess
New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2002. Cloth, 1/4 First edition, Second printing Near Fine in Near Fine Dust Jacket Hardcover copy with DJ; book is a history of the great firestorm the burned through the town of Peshtigo, WI and in Chicago, IL; includes black and white photographs and illustrations Pages are clean and white and binding is tight; DJ has very slight and small rubbing marks and no edgewear; copy is as close to fine as possible ( more information) Offered by Wellington Square Bookshop (United States)
Favorite bookseller : you've previously added this bookseller to your favorites list.
|
|
|
8)
|
Firestorm at Peshtigo: A Town, Its People, and the Deadliest Fire in American History
William Lutz; Denise Gess
Henry Holt and Co, 2002-08-02. Hardcover. Like New. First Edition, First Printing. Excellent condition (title page clipped/removed, light wear/scuffing on first page, otherwise in mint/pristine condition). Pages are crisp and clean with a tight spine. Ships Quickly! Shop with confidence, satisfaction guaranteed! ( more information) Offered by novel-books (United States)
Favorite bookseller : you've previously added this bookseller to your favorites list.
|
|
|
0 items in cart
Muze Inc. For personal non-commercial use only. All rights reserved. Some content for books is owned by Baker & Taylor, Inc. or its licensors and is subject to copyright and all other protections provided by applicable law.
