"Black Fire" by Robert Graysmith (2012)

When Mark Twain was living in San Francisco during the 1860’s, he became acquainted with a man named Tom Sawyer. That’s right; there really was a Tom Sawyer. And, as a bonus for me, he came from Brooklyn, New York.  Twain met Sawyer at the bath house run by Ed Stahle on Montgomery Street when the young Twain was working as a reporter for the Daily Morning Call. While in the bath house the two would play cards and swap tales. Mr. Sawyer’s adventures were so awe inspiring, and far ranging, that Twain never forgot about them, later incorporating them into his iconic book.

Robert Graysmith, author of several books, including “The Laughing Gorilla”, has done it again. He has taken on the subjects of Mark Twain, the history of San Francisco during the Gold Rush;  and all the characters of those heady days; weaving them together in a rollicking and highly entertaining fashion, to form this book.

The history of fire fighting in San Francisco is in many ways the same as in other cities of the time. Different private fire fighters competed with one another to be the first on the scene of a fire. There were pitched battles waged between these competitors, even while the fires raged, consuming the buildings the firemen were fighting so hard to protect. To make matters worse, there was no real building code to speak of, and houses were built of any available material, including oilcloth and canvas. Along with the wood used in almost every structure in town, the place was just waiting to burn down.

And burn it did; six times; between Christmas Eve of 1849 and the early summer of 1851. To help matters along there was an arsonist; or more than one; who may have even been a firefighter.  Mr. Sawyer’s gripping accounts of the battles waged by the competing fire companies, along with the complete indifference of both the populace and their elected officials to the formation of a Fire Department, would make this a great book all by itself. But, by exploring the relationship between Mark Twain and Tom Sawyer, the author has gone further in giving this book a special place in any collection.

In his usual, almost lyrical, fashion the author has given life to the cold hard facts of how many buildings were destroyed and how much it all cost in dollars. The description of the horror could only be described by one who not only lived it, but by someone who fought the blazes and ate the smoke.

Sawyer was a firefighter in New York before boarding a ship that took him around the horn of South America and on to San Francisco. He was, at times, a firefighter, a seaman, and eventually; playing upon the notoriety brought on by Mark Twain’s book; he became a very well-known saloon keeper.

Although the story of the real life existence of Tom Sawyer has been told before, it has always been a short footnote explaining that there really was a Tom Sawyer. And that’s about it. Mr. Graysmith is; I believe; the first author to seriously undertake the telling of the entire story of both Mr. Sawyer, and how his real life exploits came to inspire Mark Twain to write one of the most beloved American novels.

"City of Scoundrels" by Gary Krist (2012)

July 1919 was known as the Red Summer for several reasons. The Bolsheviks had just taken over Russia in the Revolution of 1917, and there was a world war that had just ended, with millions of people heaping blame for the carnage on the backs of the Industrialists, whom many believed suckered us into a war for profit. Coupled with the rise of the Unions in our own country, with their links to the Communist movement taking place world-wide, a young man named J. Edgar Hoover was just launching his infamous “Red Squads”, who were responsible for rounding up, and deporting, those who would foster discontentment and dissent in America.

This was also a time of great scientific and mechanical advancement. The airplane had proven itself useful as a tool for war, but with peacetime there came the question of what to do with airpower. It was already being used to transport the mail, but what about people? Part of that aerial technology was the zeppelin; or dirigible; which carried passengers in a gondola suspended from the zeppelin itself. In July of 1919 one such zeppelin was scheduled to land in Chicago to much acclaim. There was even talk of Chicago becoming the destination for flights from London and Paris, which would bypass New York, carrying her passengers further into the interior of the United States than an ocean voyage to our coast could accomplish. Until this point, if you came from Europe hoping to settle anywhere in the interior portion of the United States, you first took a ship to the coast of New York, or San Francisco, and then worked your way inward from there.

Fresh from our victory in Europe, flush with capital to invest in new technologies, few could have imagined the chain of events which would begin with the arrival of Goodyear’s zeppelin “Wingfoot Express” on July 21, 1919 in Chicago.

At approximately 5 PM on that day; just as the fans at Comiskey Park were 3 innings into a double header between the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox; the Wingfoot Express exploded over downtown Chicago, crashing through the glass domed roof of the Illinois Trust Company building, and setting fire to an area of Chicago’s famed loop. The 5 passengers and crew all jumped with parachutes, but only 4 opened properly, and even those caught fire from being too close to the burning zeppelin as they opened.

As horrifying as this event was, it was only the beginning. For the next 2 weeks Chicago would be torn by unrelated tragedies, all unfolding upon the heels of the last one. Within 2 days of the zeppelin incident, a race riot broke out in South Chicago at the 26^th Street section of the beach along the shores of the lake, which was broken up into several segregated places for blacks and whites to swim separately. The riot began as a routine disagreement, but quickly became one of the worst race riots in American history.

A transit strike followed on the heels of that tragedy, forcing many Chicagoans into the street for their commutes to work. This event only served to enlarge the violence begun by the riots at the beach, as blacks and whites were forced, by the strike, to pass through one another’s neighborhoods, and multiplying the odds for even more violence.

As if this was not enough trouble for one town to deal with in such a short period of time, the body of a 6 year old girl, who had been missing, was found in the basement of a tenement building on the North Side of Chicago. This was the worst part of the entire 2 weeks, as neighbors began to distrust their neighbors, and no children played in the streets.

The evangelical put it down to the wrath of God, and while the blacks and whites blamed one another, there were still others, some with political ambitions, who were willing to add fuel to the fire in order to reap some sort of benefits from these combined tragedies.

A wide ranging look at one of America’s most fascinating cities, the author has crafted a highly readable book from the ashes of a summer which spun wildly out of control.