Review by Booklist Review
What do you get when a city grows at an astronomical pace, piling wooden buildings against one another in densely populated blocks, and the municipal government refuses to provide adequate fire protections or sufficiently fund the fire department because elite developers and landowners refuse to pay taxes? Disaster. It happened in October 1871, when the fire in the O'Leary barn south of the river was whipped into an inferno by strong winds that devastated a vast swath of the city. Smith drops readers right into the action, transforming us into virtual citizens caught up in the conflagration and its aftermath of raucous political debates, intense class and ethnic tensions, yellow journalism, and the incredible energy and drive that enabled Chicagoans to rebuild. Along the way, readers meet an eclectic cast of characters and experience the rebirth of the city, the birth of the Chicago Public Library, and numerous controversies over relief and reconstruction. Smith, professor emeritus at Northwestern University, the author of a plethora of books on urban development and crises, and a true master of his craft, sets the historical record straight in advance of the sesquicentennial anniversary of Chicago's "great fire."
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Historian Smith (City Water, City Life) exhaustively chronicles the 1871 fire that destroyed nearly three square miles of Chicago (out of 36 total square miles) and left approximately 90,000 people homeless. In the two decades following the 1850 census, Smith notes, the city's population grew from 30,000 to 330,000. Rapid development contributed to political division, economic stratification, and shoddy construction, he contends, as "greedy landlords who wanted to squeeze every penny they could out of their properties" wedged several wooden houses back to back on one city lot, with barely two feet between structures. Though nearly half of Chicagoans came from abroad, the city's wealth and municipal government were controlled by native-born Protestants who were unwilling to raise taxes to expand the fire department. In the week before the fire broke out, the city's 190 firefighters had battled "more than two dozen conflagrations," Smith notes, and one-third had been "incapacitated" by an inferno at a mill. He details systems failures that gave the fire "a substantial head start"; reveals how political squabbling and class prejudices slowed aid distribution; and details reconstruction efforts. The level of detail astonishes, but grows ponderous at times. Still, this is a definitive retelling of one of America's "most fabled disasters." (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Historian Smith (emeritus, history, Northwestern Univ; The Plan of Chicago) fully researches and examines the Great Chicago Fire, which spanned three days in October 1871. Surprisingly, this is the first popular history book on the subject of the fire. Smith's well-written narrative not only examines the fire itself, but also the rise of the city of Chicago and how it was forced to rebuild after the blaze tore through its neighborhoods. With accessible writing, Smith tells the story of the disaster through various individuals who lived in and around the city. The book dives into the intrigue surrounding city officials, who received warnings from those who recognized that the city's poor engineering would mean a fire not only possible, but actually likely to occur. Smith also includes many maps of Chicago neighborhoods before and after the fire, portraits of people involved in local government, and pictures of buildings and landscapes that were forever changed. VERDICT Stunningly well-researched, this book fully examines a pivotal moment in Chicago's history. Readers of Smith's other Chicago-based books will find this fascinating. Fans of Erik Larson, American history, and the triumph of the human spirit will also greatly enjoy.--Jason L. Steagall, Arapahoe Libs., Centennial, CO
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
In which Mrs. O'Leary's cow is cleared of all charges. Chicago was not prepared for the conflagration that erupted on Oct. 8, 1871. Writes Smith, an emeritus professor of history at Northwestern, the city was barely 40 years old and had been constructed haphazardly, with wooden structures barely held together by a few nails and--as with the home of the Irish immigrant O'Leary family--set atop pilings rather than a foundation. The fire that began in their barn--no bovine agency involved--spread quickly, and it didn't help that the city's pumping station was one of the victims. The fire spoke not just to overcrowding, class divides, poverty, and poor building standards, but also to political corruption. Yet Chicago was also a city of economic promise. "The outbreak of the Crimean War in 1853 caused American wheat exports to double in volume and triple in value," writes the author, and the more or less contemporaneous development of the transcontinental railroad, the grain elevator, and mass stockyards placed the port city in an enviable position. Chicago was able to rebuild, and fairly quickly, though it would be years before it had the solidity of stone and steel that characterizes it today. Smith unearths several interesting aspects of the great fire. One was the organization, around the country and world, of tremendous relief efforts--"even Richmond, Virginia, and other southern cities joined in, as did remote Santa Fe and even remoter Honolulu" along with magnates like J.P. Morgan and potentates like the emperor of Prussia. Another was the role of the fire in reshaping city politics, with reformers ousting the entrenched bosses and labor gaining a sense of its power through work stoppages and strikes for better pay and working conditions. The result, writes Smith in this fast-moving narrative, was a rapid expansion of an almost new city--though poor Catherine O'Leary still carries the blame and has been the fire's "most enduring victim." A vivid history revealing hidden aspects of supposedly well-known events. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
