On the afternoon of December 30, 1903, during a sold-out matinee performance, a fire broke out in Chicago s Iroquois Theatre. In the short span of twenty minutes, more than six hundred people, two thirds of whom were women and children, were asphyxiated, burned, or trampled to death in a panicked mob s failed attempt to escape. A century after the firethe deadliest in American historyNat Brandt provides the only detailed chronicle of this horrific event to assess not only the titanic tragedy of the fire itself but also the municipal corruption and greed that kindled the flames beforehand and...