Magnitude 8
Earthquakes and Life Along the San Andreas Fault
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Magnitude 8 is the archetypal natural disaster defined. To understand the cataclysmic earthquake that will tear California apart one day, Philip L. Fradkin has written a dramatic history of earthquakes and an eloquent guide to the San Andreas Fault, the world's best-known tectonic landscape. The author includes vivid stories of earthquakes elsewhere: in New England, the central Mississippi River Valley, New York City, Europe, and the Far East. Always, he combines human and natural drama to place the reader at the epicenter of the most instantaneous and unpredictable of all the Earth's phenomena. Following the San Andreas Fault from Cape Mecino to Mexico--canoeing the fault line in northern California and walking underground through the Hollywood fault--noted environmental historian Philip L. Fradkin reclaims the human dimensions of earthquakes from the science-dominated accounts.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The history of California and Californians is inextricably intertwined with earthquakes--as is made abundantly clear in Fradkin's new book (after The Seven States of California), an expansive seismological trek along the San Andreas Fault line. Fradkin covers California's quakes from early theories to state-of-the-art science, from the 1857 Fort Tejon quake to the 1994 Northridge quake. There is much hard science here, detailing everything from standard theories on quakes past and present to debates within the seismological community. Some of the most fascinating sections of the book deal not with geology or seismology, however, but with human reactions, both personal and civil, to the destructive potential of quakes. Fradkin reports that during the rebuilding of San Francisco following the 1906 quake, building codes were relaxed to hasten reconstruction of the city and references to the quake were deleted in subsequent writings, focusing instead on the ensuing fire. There is also excellent coverage of quakes as media events, including the Loma Prieta quake in 1989, which interrupted the World Series. Fradkin tackles his topic expertly and with a keen sense that earthquakes are social as well as geological events that have shaped not only the landscape of the state but also the attitudes of those who live there.
