December 2005    

A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 Author: Simon Winchester Publisher: HarperCollins $27.95 Cloth (462 p.) ISBN: 0060571993 B&T         YBP Reviewed by Marcia Amidon Lusted, Statusing When my sister (who is a librarian) saw the jacket for this book, she groaned and called it a "librarian's nightmare". I rarely pay that much attention to a dust jacket, but this one is truly unusual: from a series of pleats, it folds out into a large poster. As far as the book itself, Simon Winchester has done his usual thorough treatment with the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, to a degree that surpasses the usual accounts of this disaster. I was expecting great detail about the incident itself: the earthquake and fire that pretty much destroyed San Francisco both in physical terms and in terms of the economic importance it held for the west coast. While Mr. Winchester does eventually get to the actual disaster and the consequences, much of the book is taken up with the geological cause of the earthquake. He explains plate tectonics and takes the reader on a geological tour of the world to identify evidence of the results of the ever-moving geology of the planet. He touches on other geological disasters that took place that same year, and talks about the history of San Francisco itself. If you are looking for a book devoted only to the earthquake incident, what happened, and how the city recovered, this is probably more book than you need. It takes a good two hundred pages to get to the accounts of the actual earthquake and much of the geological information is most likely beyond the scope of the casual reader. It is, however, the most thorough treatment of the entire disaster, its causes, and the potential for future catastrophic earthquakes, that I have read. If you are looking for more than an eyewitness account of a famous disaster, it is well worth the effort. Published by YBP Library Services 999 Maple St., Contoocook, NH 03229 USA v: 800.258.3774   f: 603.746.5628 w: www.ybp.com   e: academia@ybp.com All rights reserved.