This resonant and fascinating book by a renowned historian examines how seven fires shaped the larger course of American history. The Boston fire of 1760 set the stage for the American Revolution. The Pittsburgh fire of 1845 opened the way to larger scale industrial plants. Out of the ashes of the Chicago fire of 1871 came the modern skyscraper, the Haymarket Riots, and the Pullman Strike. The Baltimore fire of 1904 showed how a city's downtown, utterly destroyed, could re-invent itself after a catastrophe. The Detroit fire of 1967 forced politicians to concede what people of Detroit already knewthat racism and racially-based deprivation were not changed by the civil rights movement. The Oakland Hills tragedy demolished a landscape of private privilege and imperiled the dream of leisure living in natural settings. Apart from their domestic and global political implications, the fires of 9/11 have prodded a complacent nation to admit to itself that twentyfirst century emergency services, and the urban lifestyles they protected, have to be thoroughly rethought. Told through gripping narrative chronicles of the catastrophic events, memorable portraits of historic figures, and incisive, thought-provoking analysis, Seven Fires reveals a nation and a people at its best and worst and illustrates how disasters teach lessons that, if we grasp them, can help us better our society. The seven fires chronicled here are those of Boston (1760), Pittsburgh (1845), Chicago (1871), Baltimore (1904), Detroit (1967), the East Bay of Oakland Hills (1991), and Lower Manhattan (2001). Hoffer examines the relation between fires and city life over the course of 250 years in the U.S. He explores how we as a people and a nation prepare for these fires and sometimes "negligently increase the risk of them," how we fight them and sometimes lose, and how we are transfixed by the spectacle of conflagrations and yet summon the courage to combat them. These seven fires, he writes, are typical of the conflagrations of their times and are what he calls "critical moments in our urban development that shaped the larger course of our history." Hoffer points out that while techniques of firefighting have changed over the years, some characteristics of fighting fires remain constant. He also details the dangers that firefighters face. Hoffer's mastery of narrative detail brings the history of these disasters vividly alive. George Cohen Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Peter Hoffer is professor of history at the University of Georgia. He is the author of Past Imperfect and many academic works. He lives in Athens, GA, and Camden, NJ. It is perhaps a slight overstatement to say, as Peter Charles Hoffer does in his subtitle, that the seven city fires under discussion herein "reshaped America," but their ramifications were certainly felt far beyond the boundaries of the cities where they occurred. Boston 1760, Pittsburgh 1845, Chicago 1871, Baltimore 1904, Detroit 1967, Oakland Hills 1991 and New York City 2001 -- all obviously were major conflagrations that caused catastrophic destruction, but all also were more than just fires, because they led to important changes in American life and exposed the vulnerability of large cities to particular forms of devastation. The seven fires: Boston in 1760 was essentially a wooden city, rebuilt as such after a terrible fire a half-century earlier "because the cost of rebuilding in wood was lower than the cost of fireproofing" and because it was in the interest of real-estate developers to rebuild quickly. The conflagration that swept through the city in March, greatly aided by a powerful wind, "the ally of urban fire [that] bears the fire on its back and throws its embers into the sky so that the fire can be reborn over and over," killed no one but destroyed a 20-acre tract in the Old South End of the city and left hundreds of its poorest residents homeless. Pittsburgh in 1845 had a "morbid fascination with fire," an "arrogant conceit that it could turn fire into an obedient servant." It was the "iron city," and "the iron maker's fire had to burn around the clock." Ramshackle houses were side by side with forges and factories, and the air was constantly thick with smoke and soot. The fire that started at a rooming house in April spread rapidly and erratically, controlled by a quirky wind that moved this way and that. It destroyed well over a thousand buildings and did $12 million in damage -- a vast amount at the time -- but, again, killed no one. Chicago in 1871, like Pittsburgh a quarter-century earlier, was a city on the make, densely packed with poor laborers living in wooden houses that weren't much better than shacks, "a horizontal forest, a waiting feast for a great fire." The terrible fire in October probably wasn't set when Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over a lantern, as legend has long insisted, but it did start in her barn, and it was a calamity, killing more than