A chronicle of fires that have ravaged New York City since a Dutch ship burned in the harbor in 1613, this poetic epic puts the reader on the scene of the most fascinating and terrifying conflagrations - at the Greenwich School, the Crystal Palace, Barnum's American Museum, the Empire State Building airplane crash, the paddlewheeler General Slocum, the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, and many others.

Mr. Obenzinger provides realistic, and sometimes explicit language, that the principals at these disasters might have used.

This book, complimented by about 100 small black and white photos and drawings, will be best appreciated by FDNY historians.