Golden City on Fire : Sherman Smith : 9780578409566 : 0578409569 : 30 Nov 2018 : GOLDEN CITY on FIRE, authored by Sherman Smith is a historical bone-chilling recount of San Francisco's most traumatic even, the 1906 devastating earthquake. Brilliantly written, Smith generates his research into riveting sentences sweeping the reader into the midst of hysteria and chaos as a small band of strong minds manage to keep their wits while all others are losing their sanity. "...sorry I didn't bring a cake" is uttered as a simple calming honest birthday wish between two souls while all around them the trembling city explodes unto cinder and shatter, mangle and char falling to heaps of debris in the streets cutting off avenues and boulevards to floating in the bay clogging waterway escape. "It's hard to compartmentalize death and move on as if nothing had happened..." Sentence after sentence, page after page the reader is swept into the scene caught up as a victim, a survivor, a policeman, fire