Take whatever you THINK you know about the Great Fire and throw it ALL out the window [the way the past and present continue to vilify Mrs. Leary is absolutely criminal!!] and then do the deep dive into this fantastic book about the fire itself [and that part of the book alone will blow your mind] and then what it took to rebuild the city and the people that fought for the correct way to do it [with all the good AND bad that comes with that kind of work] and even though there are points where this delves into the more tedious, for the most part, this engaged me from page one and left me amazed [and often wondering just how ANYTHING got rebuilt], sad, and gobsmacked, often all at the same time.

If you have ever wanted to learn about that time in history, I highly recommend this book [and the excellent audiobook]. Very well done.

Thank you to NetGalley, Scott W. Berg, and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Everything you did and didn't know about the Chicago Fire. It wasn't the cow's fault.
This well-researched title deserves a space on every Chicago historian's shelf.

This is a fascinating history of the Great Chicago Fire. I learned a lot and found the writing truly riveting. I recommend it to anyone interested in the history of Chicago or just good narrative non-fiction.

This book about the great Chicago fire is a narrative history of the event. The author clearly did many hours of research and thanked the individuals and locations that helped him. I do think this would have been a better experience with a print book rather than the digital so I could look at the endnotes. Nothing was cited so it made me question full conversations. In any case a very interesting topic. Thank you NetGalley!

Some events are so big that it's rare to find someone who doesn't know about it. The Great Chicago Fire is one of those events. Everyone knows the story. Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over a lantern. Or was it "Peg Leg" Sullivan? (Oh, and her name wasn't even O'Leary.) Big events can be mangled and misunderstood almost as soon as they happen. Their repercussions can be even further controversial. Into this epic period of history steps Scott Berg and his book, "The Burning of the World."

Berg takes a look at the fire, the response, and then the political climate the fire created. The fire takes up about the first third of the book and it is exceptional. Berg is able to chronicle the disaster without getting too lost in the details and keeps the narrative kinetic throughout. I absolutely loved this portion and the stories of how the fire quickly overwhelmed the fire department. The other two thirds of the book look at the aftermath and the politics after the fire. While this section is interesting in its own right, it lacks the urgency of the fire narrative and feels like it jumps around from things like Sunday drinking laws and union strikes. Berg does connect these things, but they just do not feel as compelling as the fire itself. That said, the whole book is worth a read and even the slower parts still contain a lot to like.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor Books.)