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A Dangerous Place: California's Unsettling Fate |
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A Dangerous Place: California's Unsettling Fate
List Price: $14.00
Our Price: $11.20
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Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Author: Marc Reisner
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: 2004-07-27
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Number Of Pages: 192
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Editorial Review:
Writing with a signature command of his subject and with compelling resonance, Marc Reisner leads us through California’s improbable rise from a largely desert land to the most populated state in the nation, fueled by an economic engine more productive than all of Africa. Reisner believes that the success of this last great desert civilization hinges on California’s denial of its own inescapable fate: Both the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas sit astride two of the most violently seismic zones on the planet. The earthquakes that have already rocked California were, according to Reisner, a mere prologue to a future cataclysm that will result in immense destruction. Concluding with a hypothetical but chillingly realistic description of what such a disaster would look like, A Dangerous Place mixes science, history, and cultural commentary in a haunting work of profound importance.
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Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 
A Dangerous PLace  2006-01-05
Stacey Fredrickson
Earth Science Honors
Block G
A Dangerous Place
By: Marc Reisner
A Dangerous Place is an Intense Book. If you thought California got a lot of earthquakes, you have no idea until you read this book. This Book tells you about all of California's earthquakes and the damage they have caused. It also tells you how California was founded and why people settled on this dangerous land. The author does an excellent job explaining the intensity of earthquakes, the damage they have caused and the damage potential that they have. This book also tells you first hand how treacherous earthquakes are. The author gives details of his ordeal with the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. It is an excellent book and I highly recommend that you read it.
A dangerous place  2006-01-02
The book A Dangerous Place is about California and its difficulties. It explains all of the weather related events that go on there. Some of the events are pretty horrible, such as the Great white winter of 1886, and the seismic quietude era, between 1906-1917. That was when the most damaging earthquakes took place. Another earth quake was the Kobe quake; it took place early in the morning thankfully only being a mid-level collapse. There is a scale for earth quakes, and a 7.0-7.7 is a major quake, and an 8.0 is a HUGE quake. Most of the time scientist try to figure out when a storm or quake is coming before it happens, so they can evacuate then before any one gets hurt. Such as John Reber, he handled a huge problem that could have had a huge amount of California in a fresh water lake. He figured out that once one event happened it would only get worse, and cause a whole list of things. 1. A population influx 2. Water crisis 3. Owens River aqueduct 4. Greater population influx 5. Another water crisis 6. Colorado River aqueduct and lastly 7. Which would lead to more people and water problems?
I would recommend this book to readers who like learning about scientists, earthquakes, and history about California. I was interested in it for the first 30 or so pages, but then it got confusing, and it did not catch my interest. For me, it was not fun reading about earth quakes, because it wasn't written like a story, it was just a book of knowledge. To me, even though it didn't interest me, it made me realize how hard it is to live in a place like that and all of the circumstances and dangers it has. I would not want to live in a place like that and it makes me feel sad for all of those who have lost family member in an even that took place there.
Short and Sweet... 2005-10-14
Clearly, the first part of this book was based on research done for "Cadillac Desert" and focuses on the history of growth and water supplies for San Francisco and LA. However, the second and third sections are new: the second section covers the vulnerability of these water supplies to earthquakes (many earthquake faults cross where the water supply lines are built, The third section is a quite realistic scenario of what would happen in the Bay Area in the event of a 7.2 (I think) earthquake. The book is very readable.
It Makes You Think  2005-09-15
In light of Hurricane Katrina, and if you live in California, a must read. Quick, easy, scary, and thought provoking. It should be required reading for all of those who make decisions in California.
Welcome To My Nightmare! 2004-12-23
A Dangerous Place by Marc Reisner is a difficult book to review - even though it contains the eloquent prose a reader expects from the author of the classic Cadillac Desert, it also represents an incomplete effort due to the author's untimely death. That said - and 4 stars assigned - let's move on to why this book is worth reading.
Marc Reisner has once again nailed the situation on the head - California, had we known then what we know now, was a really cruddy place to put a heavily populated state. The most populous cities in California either sit next to potentially dangerous faults or over top of them. [When I started teaching 20 years ago, the only known nearby fault to my high school was the Whittier fault - now my earthquake unit is far more exciting given the fact that we now know of two blind thrust faults - the Puente Hills and the Elysian Park - that lie beneath the high school!] Reisner makes the case that many California cities are very expensive ruins waiting to happen. Reisner's main focus in the back 2/3rds of the book is the Bay Area, where three main faults - the San Andreas, the Calaveras, and the Hayward - run directly under areas full of buildings that still have not been brought up to current code and will not withstand the next big quake. Lucy Jones, seismologist, and her colleagues, like to point out "earthquakes don't kill people, buildings do!" Part III of the book is a well-developed fiction of what the next Hayward fault earthquake might cost California and the nation. [I went to Hillside Elementary in Berkeley [no longer a public school] for 1st and 2nd grades, which sits directly on a bench cut in the Berkeley Hills by the Hayward fault.] This section has bothered a lot of readers, but the scenario is accurate and I suspect, had Reisner lived, there would have been a Part IV or an Epilogue to put a more conclusive ending to the book. The book also lacks an index. [I'm unaware of whether this situation was rectified or not in the paperback.]
This book, warts and all, can serve a valuable purpose - start a dialog among Californians and other folks in the United States about what to do about big cities near dangerous faults. We can't move them like we can a small town along the Mississippi River that has been destroyed by a flood or summer homes that have been washed off of a barrier island. And it should be noted that some of us live in California with our eyes very wide open [and this included Reisner himself]. Reisner didn't live long enough to witness the destruction of parts of Manhattan on 9/11/01 or the mashing down of Florida by 4 hurricanes in the summer and fall of 2004. One wonders what the conclusion of the book might have been in light of those disasters.
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