The Longest Minute: The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906 (First edition)

"Matthew J. Davenport's The Longest Minute is the spellbinding true story of the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco, and how a great earthquake sparked a devastating and preventable firestorm.

At 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck San Francisco, catching most of the city asleep.

For approximately one minute, shockwaves buckled streets, shattered water mains, collapsed buildings, crushed hundreds of residents to death and trapped many alive.

Fires ignited and blazed through dry wooden ruins and grew into a firestorm.

For the next three days, flames devoured collapsed ruins, killed trapped survivors, and nearly destroyed what was then the largest city in the American West.

Meticulously researched and gracefully written, The Longest Minute is both a harrowing chronicle of devastation and the portrait of a city's resilience in the burning aftermath of greed and folly.

Drawing on the letters and diaries and