• The Longest Minute

  • The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906
  • By: Matthew J. Davenport
  • Narrated by: Traber Burns
  • Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (10 ratings)

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The Longest Minute  By  cover art

The Longest Minute

By: Matthew J. Davenport
Narrated by: Traber Burns
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Publisher's summary

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

For approximately forty-eight seconds, shock waves 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 destroyed what was then the largest city in the American West.

Matthew Davenport draws on letters, diaries, unpublished memoirs, and previously unearthed archival records, as well as interviews with engineers and geologists, to combine history and science to tell the dramatic true story of one of the greatest disasters in American history.

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.

©2023 Matthew J. Davenport (P)2023 Blackstone Publishing
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

What listeners say about The Longest Minute

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

So much detail

I'm glad I listened but at times thought it repetitive. I would have liked it if the author focused on a couple of central characters rather than graze over so many. Impressive research and history.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Factual Account

My great aunt and grandparents survived the 1906 Quake and Fire.
I have their letters from those first three terrible days which the book describes with well researched detail.

The narrator is a bit “mechanical” in his delivery but the book weaves together the strands of an extremely complicated story of the political and socioeconomic forces shaping the events at that time. It’s fascinating to hear stories of real people from every layer of society who had an impact on the events.

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History told from those who survived

A great historical book told from the voices of the past. David McCullough would be proud!

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fascinating a story of nature and man's resilience

this has everything nature, natural disaster, resilience, responding, crime and corruption, extended fight against natural resources, amazing story

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