THE DESTRUCTION OF SAN FRANCISCO: PRECEDED BY A SHORT HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE CITY

St. Louis, Missouri: Louis Lange Publishing Company, 1906. First Edition. Softcover. GOOD. Octavo, 6 3/4" x 10 1/4." pp. 54. Limp slate-blue card covers, moderately faded and worn, titled in gilt. Stringbound (two punched holes tied with brown cord). Card covers creased and in one place, peeling a little. Some soiling to pages, mostly to outer margins. 16 black and white (drawn) illustrations, 2 maps, and approximately 64 black and white photographic images of the aftermath of the 1906 conflagration throughout.

We've seen a number of these "disaster" books and what is striking about this particular one is that many
of the photographs center upon the human figures who have survived this terrible event. They are depicted
dazed and wandering, picking through smoldering ruins or else queued up in bread lines, sitting down beholding the unfathomable scale of the ruins, staring at once-familiar landmarks now piles of sometimes still-smoking ruins. Leaving through the 54 pp. booklet, one can actually imagine oneself in the middle of that desolation and terrible, unutterable loss.

Although there were numerous post-disaster books and booklets which were definitely a marketable "genre",
not a single copy shows up in World Cat's FirstSearch. Photographs with short descriptions of the devastating Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. Each picture shows the city in shambles, with buildings reduced to piles of rubble and entire city neighborhoods destroyed. Important source for photographs of the earthquake.