| Description |
xiv, 462 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm |
|
regular print |
| Summary |
"In the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, San Francisco and a string of towns to its north-northwest and 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. 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 effected a swath of California more than 200 miles long, were the fires that took over the city for three days, leaving chaos and horror in their wake. The human tragedy included the deaths of upwards of 700 people, with more than 250,000 left homeless." |
|
"Simon Winchester brings his 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 Winchester's 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 twentieth-century California and American history."--BOOK JACKET |
| Notes |
Maps on endpapers |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Subject |
Earthquakes -- California -- San Francisco -- History -- 20th century
|
|
San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, Calif., 1906 -- Fiction.
|
|
San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, Calif., 1906.
|
| SUBJECT |
San Francisco (Calif.) -- History http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008116871 -- 20th century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2002012476
|
| Genre/Form |
Fiction.
|
| LC no. |
2005046009 |
| ISBN |
0060571993 (hc : alk. paper) |
|
