A Crack in the Edge of the World

America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906

By: Simon Winchester

Narrated by: Simon Winchester

The international best-selling author of The Professor and the Madman and Krakatoa vividly brings to life the 1906

San Francisco Earthquake that leveled a city symbolic of America's relentless western expansion. Simon Winchester has also fashioned an enthralling and informative informative look at the tumultuous subterranean world that produces earthquakes, the planet's most sudden and destructive force.

In the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, San Francisco and a string of towns to its north-northwest and the south-southeast were overcome by an enormous shaking that was compounded by the violent shocks of an earthquake, registering 8.25 on the Richter scale. The quake resulted from a rupture in a part of the San Andreas fault, which lies underneath the earth's surface along the northern coast of California. Lasting little more than a minute, the earthquake wrecked 490 blocks, toppled a total of 25,000 buildings, broke open gas mains, cut off electric power lines throughout the Bay area, and effectively destroyed the gold rush capital that had stood there for a half century.

Perhaps more significant than the tremors and rumbling, which affected a swatch of California more than 200 miles long, were the fires that took over the city for three days, leaving chaos and horror in its wake. The human tragedy included the deaths of upwards of 700 people, with more than 250,000 left homeless. It was perhaps the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.Simon Winchester brings his inimitable storytelling abilities - as well as his unique understanding of geology - to this extraordinary event, exploring not only what happened in northern California in 1906 but what we have learned since about the geological underpinnings that caused the earthquake in the first place. But his achievement is even greater: he positions the quake's significance along the earth's geological timeline and shows the effect it had on the rest of 20th-century California and American history.

A Crack in the Edge of the World is the definitive account of the San Francisco earthquake. It is also a fascinating exploration of a legendary event that changed the way we look at the planet on which we live.

©2005 Simon Winchester (P)2005 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

• 2005 Audie Award Nominee, Nonfiction (Unabridged)

"In this brawny page-turner, best-selling writer Winchester (Krakatoa, The Professor and the Madman) has crafted a magnificent testament to the power of planet Earth and the efforts of humankind to understand her." (Publishers Weekly)

Boring

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I am considered it to be a rambling concoction. It lacked the drama of Krakatoa.

Great story

If you are an earthquake buff and love history, this is the book for you!

Earthshaking Information

What made the experience of listening to A Crack in the Edge of the World the most enjoyable?

I appreciated not only the depth of science, but also the history and humanity surrounding the major historic world tremors.

What does Simon Winchester bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Fabulously interesting book!

I could listen to Simon Winchester read the telephone book because he has a great voice, but he happens to be a wonderful author and brilliant geologist as well. At the end he speaks about the Anchorage earthquake of 1984. I think you'll enjoy this story.

Good Material, Disorganized Story

Lots of good, interesting material, but Winchester's presentation of it is disorganized. Some of the material is irrelevant. There is a "horrible" Wal-Mart in the Yukon Territory. What does that have to do with anything else in the book?

Great voice, Fairly good story.

Be prepared for heavy duty geology, that gets a bit repetitive. Best parts of this story are the personal accounts of the earthquake and the connections the author makes to the rise of fundamentalism in the US.

I love Winchester!

I thought this was a great book, and well read by the author. He does go off on tangents, but I find them all interesting. He combines history, natural science, and a breezy, almost gossipy tone that make for a fun listen. It's educational too, but that's really not the point.

Simon Winchester is someone I always enjoy spending time with!

wonderfully informative

Very well researched. Details superb and presented in a very entertaining way. We'll done!

Wonderful Read

This is a stellar book which takes a historical event and allows one to see it through the lense of its affect in the USA. For a non-Bay Area the author has an increible insight to the local area and its impact on the world.

Great, multilayered historical story

Another enjoyable book by Winchester. I am now 100% sure that I will never live in California.