Editorial Review:
Unleashed by ancient geologic forces, a magnitude 8.25 earthquake rocked San Francisco in the early hours of April 18, 1906. Less than a minute later, the city lay in ruins. Bestselling author Simon Winchester brings his inimitable storytelling abilities to this extraordinary event, exploring the legendary earthquake and fires that spread horror across San Francisco and northern California in 1906 as well as its startling impact on American history and, just as important, what science has recently revealed about the fascinating subterranean processes that produced it—and almost certainly will cause it to strike again.
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Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 
Bogged down by details  2008-09-29
This book is thoroughly researched and keeps as its primary focus a fascinating subject: the earthquake that leveled San Francisco in 1906. However, it may almost be TOO researched, as it shoots off on endless tangents about the process of seismography and the tectonic mechanics of earthquakes themselves. While this formula worked for the author's previous books, this one is bogged down by the tangential stuff and not enough focus is placed on the central subject - keeping the reader from really engaging the material.
As a resident of SF, I should have loved this. In the end, however, I just merely found it interesting.
Informative and enjoyable  2008-09-05
This book is like Krakatoa in that Simon Winchester paints a picture of the era as well as the event, so that we can understand its context. This is very helpful since it is easy to assume our cultural context has always been. The author has an enjoyably detailed writing style, and builds successfully to the event and aftermath. Lots of science and lots of personal stories. Well worth reading.
Eclectic excursion through history and science 2008-08-10
This is four intertwined topics in one book, which means that you get either a highly informative amalgamation or a confusing muddle, depending on your personal taste. I'm inclined toward the former assessment, although I preferred Winchester's writing in his earlier book on Krakatoa.
- The main story, of course, is the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. But other than a brief scene-setter at the beginning of the book, the earthquake doesn't burst into the narrative until Chapter 10 (p. 243).
- Another story is the geologic and human settlement history of California. It's an interesting sidebar, which paints a more vivid picture of developments such as the 1849 Gold Rush than I ever got in history class, but far more than was necessary to set the stage for the 1906 earthquake.
- Yet another story is Winchester's travelogue, a personal journey across the North American tectonic plate, which starts in Iceland and ends at the San Andreas fault (with a side trip to Alaska). Again, this has its interesting passages, but it made me wonder if Winchester was auditioning for his own show on the Travel Channel.
- Additionally, the book covers what I'll call Seismology for Dummies. The history, the science, and (in a 17-page appendix) the measurement standards of this earthshaking discipline provide essential background for the main story, which had profound scientific implications as well as human consequences.
Winchester's narrative frequently goes off on tangents, and there are scores of footnotes offering factoids that may or may not be of interest to the reader. Mostly I found these intellectual wanderings fun to read, although sometimes it became a bit too much. But overall, I learned a lot about an event of which I knew only a little, and the reading experience proved to be engaging and thought-provoking.
Fault-line roulette stops on San Francisco, 1906 2008-08-03
Winchester is a very good popularizer of science, and he writes a meandering account of the San Francisco earthquake that covers the globe from Norway to Alaska in telling the story.
His account of the underground geology of the western states is fascinating, lending plausibility to the thought that, if not about to slide into the Pacific Ocean, California is at least sitting on top of a fast-moving (as tectonic plates go) fault-line merry-go-round about to spin it into some form of disaster.
As he did in his account of Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883, Winchester throws in a dose of anti-Christianity (blaming the San Francisco earthquake for the despicable--to him--rise of Pentecostalism), then more bizarrely (but perhaps understandable given his bias) attempts to lend some credence to the lunatic-fringe theory of Gaia. It adds nothing to his account, and were he not blinded by his anti-Christian hatred, would clearly strike him as unnecessary and damaging to his scientific mindset.
That aside, Winchester tells a cracking good story, and makes the difficult ideas understandable and interesting.
Arrogant, Pompous and Snobbish  2008-07-07
One has to wonder whether Simon Winchester fancies himself a Charles Dickens. It was not Winchester's style that causes me to ponder such a comparison, but that Dickens was paid by the word for the many books he wrote. While the book purports to be about the San Francisco Earthquake, it isn't until more than halfway through the book that the earthquake begins. The first half of the book is about Winchester's meanderings across the North American plate, from Iceland, through Greenland, New Madrid, until finally reaching San Francisco. He continues on to Alaska in the almost completely irrelevant epilogue. There is a long digression about Mt. Diablo which doesn't seem to be connected to the rest of the book.
Unlike Dickens, Winchester will not be remembered for his fine literature, but for his arrogance, pomposity, and lack of erudition. Winchester's poor scholarship and bias is so blatantly obvious that it caused several substantial guffaws at various points in the book. The Lisbon earthquake and tsunami of 1755 is offered up by Winchester as an example of how poor, unsophisticated religious people lack the intellectual capacity to understand the earthquake, saying only that "God caused it." Winchester fails to mention that the science of seismology was born with the Lisbon quake when the Marquis de Pombal, then the prime minister of Portugal, made a first attempt at a scientific understanding of the earthquake by sending out questionnaires to all in the surrounding countryside to assess what happened. He also fails to mention the enormous impact of the Lisbon earthquake on the development of theodicy - that branch of philosophy/theology which is concerned with the problem of evil.
Winchester's treatment of religion is consistently illiterate and superficial. All religions are lumped together as if they are the same. Religion is dismissed without comprehension or understanding, while at the same time scientists are lionized as the new "priests." The Jesuits do get an honorable mention for their development of the science of seismology. In fact, the Jesuit contribution to seismology was enormous.
Perhaps the biggest guffaw is the association of the Pentacostal church, and evangelical movement in general, with the San Francisco earthquake. Winchester appears to believe that the evangelical right can be traced to its reaction to the San Francisco earthquake. One wonders if Winchester has ever heard of any of the several "Great Awakenings" which have happened in this country, the last of them occurring in the 1880s - well before 1906 - and all of them associated with a renewal of various evangelical movements in America.
Similarly Winchester's treatment of the effect of the San Francisco earthquake and fire on its artists centers largely around writers - not terribly surprising since Winchester is one. Painters, for example, aren't really mentioned and although he mentions the Pan American Exposition in passing, he never discusses the numerous artists of all stripes - painters, sculptors and the like - who came to San Francisco by the boatloads to work in the Pan American Exposition and who helped rebuild and beautify San Francisco. One of these was my great-grandfather, some of whose paintings still hang in my dining room and who was well enough known that his name was included in a two volume book of early California painters. I have more than a passing interest in this subject. For Winchester, however, the facts are only interesting so long as they support his point which is that little of artistic merit came out of San Francisco after the earthquake.
Winchester also dismisses San Francisco's contributions to commerce and technology. For Winchester business didn't help build the West and contribute to the betterment of its citizens and the country as a whole, it is only responsible exploitation and misery.
Perhaps the worst indictment of this meandering of a book, however, is the fact that Simon Winchester isn't really interested in people other than himself. This is a book not about the people who experienced the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, but about plate tectonics and the San Andreas Fault. Winchester leaves one witness of the earthquake in the ocean where he experienced the quake and subsequent waves, without ever coming back to tell us what happened to the man. He recounts the narratives of four people who were woken out of bed, but only so far as they can fix the time of the first shock. Once the time of the initial shock is established, Winchester never bothers to tell us what happened to them or to finish their stories. It is the fault of this storyteller that he believes only the fault has worth.
But perhaps not his only fault. Winchester obviously thinks himself important as he narrates the audiobook edition. One survives his horrible imitations of Scottish, Irish, Italian and other accents only by wincing. Winchester has no love for ordinary people who shop at places like Wal*Mart which, for Winchester, is the "kiss of death." This is perhaps the biggest problem with the book. It purports to be the history of a city and people for which Winchester displays contempt.
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