A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906

Biology has Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould. Physics has Stephen Hawking and Brian Greene. Astronomy had Carl Sagan. But aside from a couple excellent geology-based works by John McPhee, geology hasn't had a popular spokesperson - until now. Winchester started his geology oeuvre with The Map that Changed the World and continued with Krakatoa; now we have A Crack in the Edge of the World, about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.

A Crack in the Edge of the World follows the same basic mold of Krakatoa. In fact, my only quibble is that it is structurally a bit too similar to Krakatoa; we start with the geological history of the area, followed by the human history. Midway through the book comes the disaster, with the last couple chapters covering the effects the calamity had. Half of the book is about the geology and history of California, as the stage is set and characters placed for the main event. In order to explain California's geology, plate tectonics and the history of continental movement (even pre-Pangaea) is covered. Winchester recounts a geological field trip to Iceland, where, though they didn't know it at the time, they crossed the eastern edge of the North American Plate. A history of seismic detection and seismometers is given, including an appendix on various intensity scales.

There's also a bunch of stuff about people and history, if you're into that non-science sort of thing. For instance, as is often the case, the fires started by the earthquake did more damage than the quake itself. While earthquake insurance didn't exist yet, many San Franciscans did have fire insurance. However, some insurance companies declared the fires were part of the earthquake, and thus an Act of God, and thus they didn't have to pay. Out of 100 insurance companies with claimholders in San Francisco, only six seem to have promptly paid claims. The others finagled, obfuscated, wheedled, wangled, hand-waved, and oftentimes flat out refused to pay.

Realtors and civic boosters took the opposite tack. If people thought the earthquake was a natural event that could happen again, they wouldn't move to San Francisco. So the boosters emphasized the fire, which could be perceived as a human-caused thing. Rather than calling it "The San Francisco Earthquake," or even the "Earthquake and Fire," they simply called it "The San Francisco Fire." Their message was that the fire was caused by poor building practices, which were caused by graft and greed, and these things can be improved upon. So come on out west to San Francisco, buy a house, set up a business; it won't happen again.

More troubling was the response to Chinatown. Many San Franciscans saw the destruction of Chinatown as the perfect opportunity to offer Chinese-Americans a chance to go live somewhere else. Initial talk about rebuilding housing for Chinese only included remote locations north or south of the city. Finally word got back to China, and the Dowager Empress herself made it known to the American government that she would be very displeased if her people were forcibly moved, and that could affect trade between the nations. That did it; Chinatown was rebuilt in its original location, where it still stands today. The initial response reminded me of Portland's Vanport flood. Built during WWII (on the site now occupied by Delta Park), Vanport was the nation's largest public housing project. It consisted of housing for shipyard workers, many of whom had been brought by train to Portland, and many of whom were black. When Vanport was wiped out in a few hours on Memorial Day 1948 by flood waters gushing through a broken dike, there was never any discussion of rebuilding it. The people who had lived there moved away, and Portland quietly forgot about it. Many Portlanders today have never heard of Vanport or the flood.

Now we come to the last paragraph, the paragraph everyone skips straight to in reviews: the, "Should I read/see/hear this?" paragraph. The answer is, it's a Simon Winchester book. If you liked Krakatoa, The Professor and the Madman, or any of Winchester's other works, you'll like this one. He explains geological ideas well, and is well on his way to being the new ambassador of geology's influence on human history. He places events into geographical and historical context, allowing them to ripple forward through time. A Crack in the Edge of the World continues Winchester's tradition of writing accessible and entertaining geology.

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