"One of the most awful tragedies of modern times has visited Galveston. The city is in ruins, and the dead will number possibly 6,000. The wreck of Galveston was brought about by a tempest so terrible that no words can adequately describe its intensity, and by a flood which turned the city into a raging sea."

-from "Chapter 1: The Terrible Hurricane"

The 20th century had barely begun when one of the most horrific disasters that would strike America over the next hundred years hit: the September 8, 1900, hurricane and resulting flood that destroyed Galveston, Texas.

This compilation of news coverage and survivor stories was published almost immediately afterward, the turn-of-the-20th-century equivalent of current-events documentary.

With a dispassionate eye but with a flair for finding the dramatic in the eyewitness accounts he relays, journalist Nathan C. Green gathers startling accounts of the death and ruin of the city, the national relief efforts that sprung up in the aftermath, and scientific assessment of the storm, and more.

In the wake of the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, this is a historical story with a fresh new relevance.

Newspaper correspondent and author NATHAN C. GREEN also wrote Story of Spain and Cuba (1896) and War with Spain (1898).