Book Review Galveston and the 1900 Storm by Patricia...

Galveston and the 1900 Storm In Galveston, Texas in the year 1900, a massive storm destroyed almost the entire town and killed many innocent people. It is considered the worst natural disaster to have ever struck American soil, although some modernists would argue it is second to Hurricane Katrina. In the book Galveston and the 1900 Storm, authors Patricia Bixel and Elizabeth Turner endeavor to explain and analyze this event. Besides a basic description, the book focuses on what happened after the Hurricane when a flourishing community lost a sixth of its population and tried to rebuild from the devastation. On September 8th of 1900, an enormous and horrifying hurricane landed on the shore of Galveston. In a few hours, most of the citys structures were destroyed and an estimated 6,000 people lost their lives in the storm or the environmental aftermath. This is a conservative estimate. Some historians put the death toll at 8,000; others as high as 12,000. Besides a traumatic event in American history, the Galveston Hurricane was also an early indicator to the American citizens how its people and how its government could react in the wake of devastating tragedy. Before the hurricane, Galveston was a prospering city of approximately 37,000 citizens. The reason why Galveston had achieved such financial prowess was because of its prime location as a trade port in the Gulf of Mexico. A few days before the hurricane, the United States Weather Bureau informed the city fathers