| Just before dawn on 18 April 1906 and for little short of a minute the earth very briefly shrugged. For the inhabitants of the western part of North America the effect was immediate and horrifying: a massive earthquake roared through the city of San Francisco, tearing through the main thoroughfare of the town in huge undulating waves as the entire surface of the earth and everything that stood upon it seemed to lift up and roll in from the ocean. Houses crashed to the ground, people were shaken from their beds, chimneys fell in on themselves and within moments great fires burst into life across the city and rages for three terrifying days. Simon Winchester's breathtaking book follows the story of the city that was built on the dreams of the American gold rush and was destroyed in less than a minute. Threaded through the extraordinary tales of human endeavour, the stories of the scientists who made sense of an uncharted land, the men and women who then settled and transformed the American West, the appalling scale of the destruction and of the shameful insurance scams, is the elemental story of the earth itself. With his inimitable voice and by way of a narrative rich with anecdote and enlightening detail, Winchester reveals the world beneath our feet and, in telling what is in essence a universal story of man's confrontation with a most pitiless nature, helps to make sense of our world now. Contents:
List of Maps
List of Illustrations
Prologue
- The Well-Illuminated Earth
- A Born-Again Science
- The View From On High
- The Street Before Morning
1. Chronicle: A Year of Living Dangerously
2. The Temporary City
3. Chronicle: Such Almost Modern Times
4. From Plate to Shining Plate
- A Simple Plan
- The Plate Entire
- The Eastern Front
- The World Beyond Ur
- A Certain Nervous Shaking
- The Unstill Centre
5. Chronicle: The State of the Golden State
6. How the West was Made
7. The Mischief-Maker
8. Chronicle: City of Mint and Smoke
9. Overture: The Night Before Dark
10. The Savage Interruption
- The Rustling of the Leaves
- The Measurings of the Mechanicals
- And the Walls Came Tumbling Down
- The Stricken City
- The Human Response
11. Ripples on the Surface of the Pond
- The Vengeance of the Lord
- The Coming of the Paper People
- The Flight of Creation
- A Fretworked City, Pinned With Steel
- Getting Safely Out of Dodge
Epilogue: Perspective - Ice and Fire
Appendix: On Getting an Earthquake's Measure
Suggestions for Further Reading, with Caveats
A Glossary of Possibly Unfamiliar Terms and Concepts
Geological Timescale
With Gratitude
Text and Illustration Acknowledgements
Index Review:
Early on April 18, 1906, the San Andreas fault ruptured in an earthquake measuring 8.25 on the Richter scale. San Francisco was destroyed-- first by shakes and then by fire. Simon Winchester lays out extensive history, geological background, and some pointless personal road trips before embarking on an account of the actual 'quake. - [Extract of review from Amazon.com, AudioFile 2006] |
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