Magnitude 8: Earthquakes and Life Along the San Andreas Fault - Hardcover

Fradkin, Philip L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805046968 ISBN 13: 9780805046960

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co., 1998

Synopsis

The archetypal natural disaster defined on the verge of the millennium. 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.

About this title

Review:

"The tectonic history of any one part of the earth, like the life of a soldier, consists of long periods of boredom and short periods of terror." With this quotation from geologist Derek Ager, Pulitzer Prize-winning environmental journalist Philip Fradkin, "a literary geologist with a notebook in one hand and a hammer in the other," begins his trip along the San Andreas Fault. His persistent question is how "a culture could ignore this powerful natural agent while simultaneously being shaped by it." Fradkin himself lives near the fault, and he understands the human reluctance to remember the past and to prepare for the inevitable. He looks at the history and impact of the major California earthquakes of the past 150 years, from Fort Teijin in 1857 to Northridge in 1994. Throughout, he exposes the problems caused by human shortcomings: the amnesia of the general public, earthquake engineers' conflicts of interest, and the failures of science. His discussions of the politics of earthquake prediction and of the "arcane systems" used to measure earthquake magnitudes are the best in print. "I wanted others to be aware of the fault's physical presence and its awesome power," Fradkin writes. He may also succeed at raising Californians' awareness of how to prepare for earthquakes--and at shortening their feelings of boredom while lengthening their periods of prudent terror. --Mary Ellen Curtin

From the Inside Flap:

"This superb cautionary tale should be required reading for every Californian. (And smug New Yorkers will be shocked by Fradkin's surprising account of their own seismic vulnerability.)"―Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz

About this edition

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0805046968
• ISBN 13: 9780805046960
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480