"On the eve of the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, Mercy Wong--daughter of Chinese immigrants--is struggling to hold her own among the spoiled heiresses at prestigious St. Clare's School. When tragedy strikes, everyone must band together to survive"--

"In this addition to the What Was? series, kids will experience what it was like to be in San Francisco in 1906 when the ground buckled in a major, catastrophic earthquake. One early April morning in 1906, the people of San Francisco were jolted awake by a mammoth earthquake--one that registered 7.8 on the Richter Scale. Not only was there major damage from the quake itself but broken gas lines sparked a fire that ravaged the city for days. More than...

When disaster struck San Francisco on April 18, 1906, photographer Arnold Genthe grabbed a pocket camera and ventured out to document the destruction. Now, over a century later, the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts presents the definitive collection of Genthe's historic photographs.

"Matthew J. Davenport's The Longest Minute is the spellbinding true story of the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco, and how a great earthquake sparked a devastating and preventable firestorm. At 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck San Francisco, catching most of the city asleep. For approximately one minute, shockwaves buckled streets, shattered water mains, collapsed buildings, crushed hundreds of residents to death...