A Crack in the Edge of the World

International bestselling author, Simon Winchester, vividly brings to life the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake that leveled a city symbolic of America's relentless western expansion. Winchester has also fashioned an enthralling and informative look at the tumultuous subterranean world that produces earthquakes, the planet's most sudden and destructive force. Bringing together his inimitable storytelling abilities as well as his unique understanding of geology, Winchester explores not only what happened in northern California in 1906 but what we have learned since about the geologic underpinnings that caused the earthquake in the first place - 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. A fascinating and definitive exploration of a legendary event. Illustrated with B/W photos. Hardbound w/dustjacket: 463 pages: 6.5 x 9.5"