1906

As a native San Franciscan who grew up in that mixed area bordering Pacific Heights and the Western Addition, I was more than anxious to read this book. I was also intrigued as a former reporter who had Nellie Bly as an early heroine. The story here is enthralling as any retelling of the events of April 1906 should be, but the author's mixing of points of view from third to first person was confusing at times. Also the quick movement around the City was a little unsettling, much as it was in an old Alan Ladd movie, Hell on Frisco Bay, in which the San Francisco audience burst out laughing at the progress of a motor boat around the bay.The story of the graft and corruption of the era in politics and on the Barbary Coast is sometimes hard to believe, even if you know it is true! This is not my favorite of recent books I have read, but I am very glad to have done so. Whether you are familiar with the story or not it's a pretty good read.And, yes, Caruso was there!

What I thought I was getting here was a story of the earthquake. I thought it would be just an historical fiction narrative, perhaps in line with Howard Fast's first installment of his Lavette Family series, The Immigrants (which I quite liked, by the way). There is more historical fact in this one,......more

If high school text books read like James Dalessandro's "1906," nobody would sleep through history class. The apocalyptic earthquake that levelled San Francisco on April 18, 1906 started at 5:12 A.M. Fifty–three seconds later, the “Paris of the Pacific” was a pile of rubble. A hellish three-day fires......more

I found 1906 enthralling from beginning to end. San Francisco, at the time of the historic earthquake was in the grip of one of the most corrupt political machines we have ever seen in this country. James Dalessandro’s novel is as much about the efforts of brave citizens to end this corruption as it......more

I read this as part of my continued research on the Great San Francisco Earthquake. I've read a great deal of nonfiction, but I wanted a level of detail that can only be found in fiction. I found this book, published in 2005 not long before the centennial of the quake. 1906 struck me as extremely irr......more

A friend put this in my hands and said, 'You've got to read this.' I expected it to be about the big earthquake and the devastation that followed. Since I already knew that the corruption and incompetence in city government increased the destruction begun by the quake, I thought it would focus on ev......more