In the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, San Francisco was overcome by the violent shocks of an enormous earthquake, registering 8.25 on the Richter scale. The tremors and rumbling, affecting a swathe of California more than 200 miles long, triggered a vast firestorm in the city, effectively destroying the gold rush capital that had stood there for half a century. Simon Winchester brings his inimitable storytelling abilities to this extraordinary event, exploring not only what happened in northern California nearly 100 years ago, but what we have learned since then about the geological underpinnings that caused the earthquake in the first place.
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. He sounds like your favorite professor--mostly interesting but occasionally a little dull. The strength of his book is its oral history, which mostly translates well to audio. However, Winchester's reading is a bit uneven; his American accents are sometimes wobbly, and his pace is almost breathless. (Do Californians really speak this quickly?) Yet when he drops the accent, he is wonderful. A.B. 2006 Audie Award Finalist (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
About the Author
Simon Winchester has been a globetrotting correspondent. Trained at Oxford as a geologist, he is the author of Krakatoa, The Map that Changed the World, and The Professor and the Madman.
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A Crack in the Edge of the World
by Simon Winchester
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