A Crack in the Edge of the World

America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906

By: Simon Winchester

Narrated by: Simon Winchester

Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

The international best-selling author of The Professor and the Madman and Krakatoa vividly brings to life the 1906

San Francisco Earthquake that leveled a city symbolic of America's relentless western expansion. Simon Winchester has also fashioned an enthralling and informative informative look at the tumultuous subterranean world that produces earthquakes, the planet's most sudden and destructive force.

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, 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 affected a swatch of California more than 200 miles long, 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 upwards of 700 people, with more than 250,000 left homeless. It was perhaps the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.Simon Winchester brings his inimitable 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 his 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 20th-century California and American history.

A Crack in the Edge of the World is the definitive account of the San Francisco earthquake. It is also a fascinating exploration of a legendary event that changed the way we look at the planet on which we live.

©2005 Simon Winchester (P)2005 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

• 2005 Audie Award Nominee, Nonfiction (Unabridged)

"In this brawny page-turner, best-selling writer Winchester (Krakatoa, The Professor and the Madman) has crafted a magnificent testament to the power of planet Earth and the efforts of humankind to understand her." (Publishers Weekly)

Captured by science dressed as a yarn. . .

I was hesitant to try this reading since I thought it might be an attempt to cash in on the century anniversary of the San Francisco earthquake. In fact, after having finished this wonderful book, I think the editor might have convinced the author to bend the story toward this earthquake, but the book stands beautifully as an understandable description of geology as it relates to plate movement worldwide. Unlike some other reviewers, I found the author to be the perfect reader and the story interesting, as it weaves the San Francisco event into the facts of our earth and our western America history. This book has convinced me to try another by this author. I rated it a four rather than five only because I save my five-star ratings for books which I feel will stand as classics. This is rather a book which used science as we know it today to relate to history, and did so in a way which captured me, but which I probably will not revisit as I do the classics.

Slow going at times but immensely interesting.

fascinating details that are rewarding even if you have to slog a bit at times buried with facts. Love his ability to go from one subject to a side outlandish fact.

This Book Delivers

An excellent book!

Simon Winchester goes into great detail in the book, as he does in his other books. And, as the description indicates, this covers far more than the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.

Winchester ensures that readers of this book understand the context in which the 1906 earthquake occurred by giving extraordinary detail on the history of earthquakes and our understanding of them, the history of San Francisco (up to 1906), and detailed look at the mechanics of the San Andreas Fault.

The Publisher's Summary above clearly shows this is more than just a look at one particular earthquake. The excerpt from Publishers Weekly also describes this as more than just about the 1906 earthquake. Based on those descriptions, and after listening to the book, I have to say that I got everything I expected... and more.

Simon Winchester is the narrator for his book and does an excellent job.

Geology, History and Short Stories

I really enjoyed this detailed account of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. Simon Winchester put a great deal of work into all of the social as well as geological conditions of that time. I loved how he combined so many short stories into the telling of this great event. I was particularly interested in the story of the Pentecostal movement and how it began. Simon takes the reader way back in time and then leads him through many fascinating stories. Since he wrote this book however, earthquake prediction has become much more accurate, thanks in part to quakeprediction.com.

I want to have dinner party with Simon Winchester!

Another wonderful book by a terrific author - and narrator. A Crack in the Edge of the World is a fascinating, enlightening and thought-provoking compilation of history and its lessons,geology, sociology, and the interconnectedness of, well, everything. I have enjoyed all of Mr. Winchester's books, and think that, with his knowledge and creative insights, he'd be an amazing dinner guest. I totally recommend this book.

Cracking good!

Simon Winchester is my favorite teller of true stories. He doesn’t disappoint with this one.

A colossal waste of time

What disappointed you about A Crack in the Edge of the World?

I only made it thru half of this book and I'm surprised I held out this long. You would have to be a tremendous geology fan to enjoy this in my opinion.

Skip this one

Monotone narrator plus a small amount of material on the actual SF earthquake (at least from the human interest perspective) equals BORING!

Don't bother

Horrible and boring. I felt cheated.

Save yourself some time

There is one chapter about the San Francisco earthquake. Read that chapter. The rest is filler. If listening on Audible then listen to the interview at the end and skip the rest.