The Longest Minute

The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906

By: Matthew J. Davenport

Narrated by: Traber Burns

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Matthew Davenport draws on letters, diaries, unpublished memoirs, and previously unearthed archival records, as well as interviews with engineers and geologists, to combine history and science to tell the dramatic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

Solid, but stolid

This is very well researched and intriguing. But the core of the book, the description of the earthquake, states specific locations, and what was in place at the time. It also alludes to some of the reasons for the earthquake and fire damage being so severe. But there's no ongoing cross referencing to what is in the same locations today or what has been done since. Yet the only reason anyone cares about this is that San Francisco has gone on to such success, including suffering with far less damage through more than one serious earthquake. None of this is helped by the narrator, who seems a bit bored and is therefore boring. Both the book and the reading needed a fresher and more current and cosmopolitan approach.

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.

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.

History told from those who survived

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

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