-
Black Fire
- The True Story of the Original Tom Sawyer - and of the Mysterious Fires That Baptized Gold Rush-Era San Francisco
- Narrated by: Robert Graysmith
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
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Publisher's summary
When 28-year-old San Francisco Daily Morning Call reporter Mark Twain met Tom Sawyer at a local bathhouse in 1863, he was seeking a subject for his first novel. As Twain steamed, played cards, and drank beer with Sawyer (a volunteer firefighter, customs inspector, and local hero responsible for having saved 90 lives at sea), he had second thoughts about Shirley Tempest, his proposed book about a local girl firefighter, and began to envision a novel of wider scope.
Twain learned that a dozen years earlier the then-18-year-old New York-born Sawyer had been a "Torch Boy," one of the youths who raced ahead of the volunteer firemen's hand-drawn engines at night carrying torches to light the way, always aware that a single spark could reduce the all-wood city of San Francisco to ashes in an instant. At that time a mysterious serial arsonist known by some as "The Lightkeeper" was in the process of burning San Francisco to the ground six times in 18 months - the most disastrous and costly series of fires ever experienced by any American metropolis.
Black Fire is the most thorough and accurate account of Sawyer's relationship with Mark Twain and of the six devastating incendiary fires that baptized one of the modern world's favorite cities. Set amid a scorched landscape of burning roads, melting iron warehouses, exploding buildings, and deadly gangs who extorted and ruled by fear, it includes the never-before-told stories of Sawyer's heroism during the sinking of the steamship Independence and the crucial role Sawyer and the Torch Boys played in solving the mystery of the Lightkeeper.
Drawing on archival sources such as actual San Francisco newspaper interviews with Sawyer and the handwritten police depositions of the arrest of the Lightkeeper, best-selling author Robert Graysmith vividly portrays the gritty, corrupt, and violent world of Gold Rush-era San Francisco, overrun with gunfighters, hooligans, hordes of gold prospectors, crooked politicians, and vigilantes.
By chronicling how Sawyer took it upon himself to investigate, expose, and stop the arsonist, Black Fire details - for the first time - Sawyer's remarkable life and illustrates why Twain would later feel compelled to name his iconic character after his San Francisco buddy when he wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
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Overall
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In The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan put the environmental disaster of the Dust Bowl at the center of a rich history, told through characters he brought to indelible life. Now he performs the same alchemy with the Big Burn, the largest-ever forest fire in America and the tragedy that cemented Teddy Roosevelt's legacy in the land.
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Mediocre
- By Mona on 11-04-20
By: Timothy Egan
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Triangle
- The Fire That Changed America
- By: David Von Drehle
- Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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On March 25, 1911, as workers were getting ready to leave for the day, a fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York's Greenwich Village. Within minutes it spread to consume the building's upper three stories. Firemen who arrived at the scene were unable to rescue those trapped inside: their ladders simply weren't tall enough. People on the street watched in horror as desperate workers jumped to their deaths. It was the worst disaster in New York City history.
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Interesting but Loong
- By JAS on 04-21-18
By: David Von Drehle
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The Floor of Heaven
- A True Tale of the Last Frontier and the Yukon Gold Rush
- By: Howard Blum
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 16 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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It is the last decade of the 19th century. The Wild West has been tamed and its fierce, independent and often violent larger-than-life figures – gun-toting wanderers, trappers, prospectors, Indian fighters, cowboys, and lawmen –are now victims of their own success. They are heroes who’ve outlived their usefulness.
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A major disappointment
- By Joshua on 05-03-14
By: Howard Blum
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The Devil in the White City
- Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
- By: Erik Larson
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 14 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds.
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A Rich Read!
- By D on 09-18-03
By: Erik Larson
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Gold Diggers
- Striking It Rich in the Klondike
- By: Charlotte Gray
- Narrated by: Steven Cooper
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Between 1896 and 1899, thousands of people lured by gold braved a grueling journey into the remote wilderness of North America. Within two years, Dawson City, in the Canadian Yukon, grew from a mining camp of four hundred to a raucous town of more than thirty thousand. The stampede to the Klondike was the last great gold rush in history. Scurvy, dysentery, frostbite, and starvation stalked all who dared to be in Dawson. And yet the possibilities attracted people from all walks of life.
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Disappointed...
- By Michael McGrath on 01-29-14
By: Charlotte Gray
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Dark Tide
- The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919
- By: Stephen Puleo
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Around noon on January 15, 1919, a group of firefighters were playing cards in Boston's North End when they heard a tremendous crash. It was like, "a roaring surf," one of them said later. Like, "a runaway two-horse team smashing through a fence," said another. A third firefighter jumped up from his chair to look out a window - "Oh my God!" he shouted to the other men, "Run!" A 50-foot-tall steel tank filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses had just collapsed on Boston's waterfront, disgorging its contents as a 15-foot-high wave of molasses that at its outset traveled at 35 miles an hour.
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INTERESTING STORY - ABOUT 2x TOO LONG
- By The Louligan on 09-07-14
By: Stephen Puleo
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All Things Must Fight to Live
- Stories of War and Deliverance in Congo
- By: Bryan Mealer
- Narrated by: Karl Miller
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In All Things Must Fight to Live, Bryan Mealer takes listeners on a harrowing 2000 mile journey through Congo, where gun-toting militia still rape and kill with impunity. Amidst burnt-out battlefields where armies still wrestle for control, into the dark corners of the forests, and along the high savanna, where thousands have been slaughtered and quickly forgotten, Mealer searches for signs that Africa's most troubled state will soon rise from ruin.
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Outstanding story and narration
- By Cthulhu's slobber on 09-19-19
By: Bryan Mealer
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Ruthless Tide
- The Heroes and Villains of the Johnstown Flood, America’s Astonishing Gilded Age Disaster
- By: Al Roker
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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A gripping narrative history of the 1889 Johnstown Flood - the deadliest flood in US history - from New York Times best-selling author, NBC host, and legendary weather authority Al Roker. May 1889: After a deluge of rainfall swelled the Little Conemaugh River, panicked engineers watched helplessly as swiftly rising waters threatened to breach the South Fork Dam in central Pennsylvania. Though they telegraphed neighboring towns, warning of the impending danger, residents, used to false alarms, remained in their homes. At 3:10 p.m., the dam gave way....
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Mispronunciation bothers me
- By Tracy on 09-08-18
By: Al Roker
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The Race Underground
- Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry That Built America's First Subway
- By: Doug Most
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In the late nineteenth century, as cities like Boston and New York grew larger, the streets became increasingly clogged with horse-drawn carts. When the great blizzard of 1888 brought New York City to a halt, a solution had to be found. Two brothers - Henry Melville Whitney of Boston and William Collins Whitney of New York City - pursued the dream of his city being the first American metropolis to have a subway and the great race was on.
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Informative Cobbled Telling of an Important Story
- By Lynn on 05-21-14
By: Doug Most
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City of Devils
- The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai
- By: Paul French
- Narrated by: Paul Chan
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Shanghai, 1930s; it was a haven for outlaws from all over the world: a place where pasts could be forgotten, fascism and communism outrun, names invented, and fortunes made - and lost. “Lucky” Jack Riley was the most notorious of those outlaws. An ex-US Navy boxing champion, he escaped from prison and rose to become the Slots King of Shanghai. “Dapper” Joe Farren - a Jewish boy who fled Vienna’s ghetto - ruled the nightclubs. This is the story of their rise to power, their downfall, and the trail of destruction left in their wake.
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Very hard to listen to
- By Terrance D. Harps on 07-26-18
By: Paul French
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Insurgent Mexico
- By: John Reed
- Narrated by: Frank Muller
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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"We could see them now, hundreds of little black figures riding through the chaparral. A spent bullet droned overhead, then one unspent, and then a whole flock. 'Come on, Meester! Let's go!' We began to run...." The material for this remarkable history came from journalist and poet John Reed's experience as a war correspondent during the Mexican Revolution.
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Bad recording
- By Tapioca on 08-22-07
By: John Reed
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Train
- Riding the Rails That Created the Modern World - from the Trans-Siberian to the Southwest Chief
- By: Tom Zoellner
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Tom Zoellner loves trains with a ferocious passion. In his new audiobook he chronicles the innovation and sociological impact of the railway technology that changed the world, and could very well change it again. From the frigid Trans-Siberian Railroad to the antiquated Indian Railways to the futuristic maglev trains, Zoellner offers a stirring story of man's relationship with trains. Zoellner examines both the mechanics of the rails and their engines and how they helped societies evolve. Not only do trains transport people and goods in an efficient manner, but they also reduce pollution and dependency upon oil.
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The world history of trains up to the present
- By matthew on 03-06-14
By: Tom Zoellner
What listeners say about Black Fire
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Douglas
- 07-01-13
Fascinating Narrative
Graysmith proved himself as a riveting writer in his terrifying historical account of the Zodiac serial killer, and one of the main reasons is that he was able to place the reader directly in time and place and experience as very few can, even writers of fiction, let alone history. Black Fire does not disappoint on this account either, placing one in 1800's San Fransisco, to live for the duration of the book and driving this narrative with a central real-life character: the real Tom Sawyer (Seinfeld fans: is Clemens' great novel a kind of "reality tour?"). Some Amazon reviewers complained of length and "thickness" of the narrative, but I suspect that it is merely because texting and Facebook and other such concentration killers have made us thicker in the head and thinner on attention. Someone who can stay awake for an hour at a time will enjoy this book immensely. Perhaps Graysmith flatters himself a bit as an audio book reader here, and perhaps he might be better to continue spending his time writing pages rather than reading them aloud, but you hardly notice, the book itself is so good.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Adrienne
- 06-19-17
Disappointed
One of Mark Twain's gifts was an excellent narrative flow. Robert Greysmith does not share this gift. The historical material is undoubtedly fascinating, but both the author's reading style and prose are jerky and disjointed. Jumping from incident to incident and back, pausing in the middle for an overblown description of one aspect or individual. Twain is famous for his colorful descriptions, but he has a knack for them. Robert Greysmith does not share this knack either.
I wonder if the subject matter would be better served by another reader. I doubt however that even the best reader could have made this hash of information flow smoothly.
I listened to it all the way through mind you. Now I have to listen to it a second or third time so that I can arrange all the parts in my own head in some way that makes sense.
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- Twang
- 03-10-23
What a lovely treat of a book!
Absolutely delightful and certainly worth a listen! My one very very small critique is that every now and then a word will drop out - could have used better sound mixing
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- Jeffrey Williams
- 10-10-22
Know your limits
A good story but the narration by the author is so bad I gave up. I think this could have been a wonderful book with the right narrator. Good author, great material but bad performance.
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- Mimi Routh
- 02-15-23
Terrible Narration, Way Too Yang
Author is a jerk who thinks he can read his own stuff. I lived 30 years in "the City" and loved it, but this listen is torture. Except for Lily, he hardly mentions women. It's all about "boys" having fun. Fire losses expressed in dollars. I'm out of here no thanks!
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