City on Fire: The Explosion That Devastated a Texas Town and Ignited a Historic Legal Battle

Although the Texas City Disaster happened in living memory, it's been largely forgotten. I've lived in Houston since '77 and heard about it for the first time only a few years ago. I was therefore thrilled to find such a thorough and interesting account of what happened. Minutaglio puts to rest a few myths about the event and takes the reader through the tragedy as witnessed by individuals and as it affected the town as a whole. My only gripe with the content is that I would've liked to have known more about the long-term toxic effects of all those burning chemicals and the later dousing of the town with DDT. I also feel like I should mention the writing, which was engaging but at times a bit hard to follow. Characters and chronology felt jumbled, as if a key editing pass had been overlooked before the final proof was approved. This wasn't a macro-level problem; just individual sentences in chapters that made me stop and re-read, trying to understand the author's intent. It wasn't a big problem, and I still rate this book highly because of its content and can't-put-it-down factor, but if this book gets re-issued, I hope it'll go through another edit to smooth out those parts that jerk the reader out of the story.

This is a book about a bit of history I had never knew about. It is a great read, very interesting.

I went to school on Galveston Island and the disaster was discussed during the anniversary of the horrific event, so I was pleased to get a very readable account. Short chapters make it easy for even the busiest reader to get through. It has intrigue,politics,race relations,corporate greed and human interest antedotes. The author is from Texas so he is able to add some of the regional seasoning to the story. Was glad to see there was some follow up of the main characters years after the event. A must read!!!

Don't lose sight of the fact that this book is NOT an absolute documentary piece of work -- the writer says as much in his introduction. It is instead an extremely well-told, compelling story pieced together from documentary evidence, witness accounts and interviews that well chronicles this tragedy and puts the reader right in the middle of the event. I couldn't put it down.

Mr. Minutaglio's City on Fire was very hard to put down after the first few pages. A priest foreshadows his own death in the Texas City Disaster. You feel like you really get to know the people in the story, which is amazing since it covers the whole town's experience leading up to and following the ammonium-nitrate explosions. It wasn't too long ago this explosion happened in sight of known history. However, little do we learn from the past as we watch big goverment, big business, greed and human ignorance take us down similar paths that we are helpless to control collectively, whereas individuals find grace by doing what they believe to be right.