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

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, it wrecked 490 blocks, toppled a total of 25,000 buildings, broke open gas mains and cut off electric power lines throughout the Bay area. Perhaps more significant than the tremors and rumbling 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 between 450 and 700 people, with more than 250,000 left homeless. It was perhaps the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

In A CRACK IN THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, Simon Winchester brings his inimitable take to this story, exploring not only what happened in Northern Califonia in 1906, but what we have learned since then about the geological underpinnings that caused the earthquake in the first place. Winchester's achievement is to position the quake's significance along the earth's geological timeline, while also showing the effect it had on the rest of 20th-century American history.