City on Fire : The Forgotten Disaster That Devastated a Town and Ignited a Landmark Legal Battle

by Bill Minutaglio

Release Date: 07 January, 2003

Edition: Hardcover

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Exciting Read

I read a terrific review of this book in The Washington Post a while back and was eager to check it out. Turns out the reviewer was quite right, this book SHOULD be turned into a movie. The Texas City Disaster was a horrific event not caused by nature but by greed, negligence and misguided efforts. In hindsight there was much to be learned from it that was -- for various reasons -- mostly covered over.

Author Bill Minutaglio has taken a complex story and made it visual and energetic. The characters of Father Roach and Curtis Trahan are deeply drawn and riveting, and Minutaglio weaves together the cultural, social and political currents of the time to create a fascinating backdrop.

This one's highly recommended.

Could have been much better

"City on Fire" is a book that had to be written, for it's the shocking true story about the industrial port city of Texas City, Texas, that was devastated by a pair of ammonium nitrate explosions in April 1947. It's an event that was largely forgotten about until Bill Minutaglio's book came along.

That said, "City on Fire" was a disappointment for me. The first third of it dwells on Father Bill Roach, the Catholic priest who crusades for the city's underclass. This is the worst part of the book, for much of it seems utterly made-up. As another reviewer pointed out, there's no way all of this could be factual; how could Minutaglio possibly know what Roach is seeing, thinking and saying? Other characters are treated in similar fashion.

While the book is full of florid characterizations, it has precious little about ammonium nitrate, such as how it is handled, why it is explosive, how it is manufactured and so forth. A map of the city prior to the event would have been helpful, too, as would a diagram of the Grandcamp, the ship that was the first to explode.

Minutaglio writes as if he's writing the screenplay for a low-budget TV movie. Another complaint -- far too much italic type, much of which is put there for no apparent reason.