Peter Pernin\u2019s The Great Peshtigo Fire: An Eyewitness Account<\/i> is a valuable source for what could be considered the ugly stepsister of the Great Chicago Fire.\u00a0 Had this disaster occurred at any other time, it would have garnered extensive national attention, but because of the media frenzy over the Chicago Fire, it was forgotten by contemporaries as well as historians. \u00a0While the Bales hypothesis is fascinating and worthy of farther study, it shines an interesting light on the Peshtigo fire.\u00a0 Almost everyone knows the myth about Mrs. O\u2019Leary and her cow starting the Chicago Fire, but the Peshtigo fire is much more unknown, although it took more lives and caused about the same about of property damage.\u00a0 An online source<\/a> \u00a0even goes so far as to call it the \u201cforgotten fire.\u201d\u00a0 How did this truly devastating fire that destroyed everything in its\u2019 path begin?\u00a0 Was it the dry summer or the carelessness of locals, as Pernin describes?\u00a0 The lack of contemporary criminal investigation, such as the one that occurred in Chicago, shows the radically different treatment of the two disasters.\u00a0 In this, we see the different ways that disaster is perceived and portrayed due to its location in an urban or rural area.\u00a0 Although the Peshtigo fire took more lives, the Chicago fire impacted more lives directly, and was therefore given the priority in contemporary and historical analysis.<\/p>\n