A Crack in the Edge of the World
America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906
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Narrated by:
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Simon Winchester
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By:
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Simon Winchester
About this listen
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 PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Over a half century, Malibu went from an untamed ranch in the middle of nowhere to a paradise seeded with movie stars. Behind its transformation is the love story of Frederick and May Rindge. He was a Harvard-trained confidant of presidents; she grew up on a hardscrabble Midwestern farm; yet their unlikely bond would shape history.
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Detailed and interesting
- By SuperLuckyCat on 08-04-24
By: David K. Randall
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The Johnstown Flood
- By: David McCullough
- Narrated by: Edward Herrmann
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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At the end of the last century, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was a booming coal-and-steel town filled with hardworking families striving for a piece of the nation's burgeoning industrial prosperity. In the mountains above Johnstown, an old earth dam had been hastily rebuilt to create a lake for an exclusive summer resort patronized by the tycoons of that same industrial prosperity, among them Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellon.
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A page-turner! HIstory that reads like a novel
- By Susan K Donley on 06-17-05
By: David McCullough
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Ruthless Tide
- The Heroes and Villains of the Johnstown Flood, America’s Astonishing Gilded Age Disaster
- By: Al Roker
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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A gripping narrative history of the 1889 Johnstown Flood - the deadliest flood in US history - from New York Times best-selling author, NBC host, and legendary weather authority Al Roker. May 1889: After a deluge of rainfall swelled the Little Conemaugh River, panicked engineers watched helplessly as swiftly rising waters threatened to breach the South Fork Dam in central Pennsylvania. Though they telegraphed neighboring towns, warning of the impending danger, residents, used to false alarms, remained in their homes. At 3:10 p.m., the dam gave way....
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Mispronunciation bothers me
- By Tracy on 09-08-18
By: Al Roker
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The Promise of the Grand Canyon
- John Wesley Powell's Perilous Journey and His Vision for the American West
- By: John F. Ross
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
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John Wesley Powell’s first descent of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1869 counts among the most dramatic chapters in American exploration history. When the Canyon spit out the surviving members of the expedition - starving, battered, and nearly naked - they had accomplished what others thought impossible and finished the exploration of continental America that Lewis and Clark had begun almost 70 years before.
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Parallels
- By Bruce McClenahan on 01-25-19
By: John F. Ross
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Jungle of Stone
- The True Story of Two Men, Their Extraordinary Journey, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya
- By: William Carlsen
- Narrated by: Paul Michael Garcia
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1839 rumors of extraordinary yet baffling stone ruins buried within the unmapped jungles of Central America reached two of the world's most intrepid travelers. Seized by the reports, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood sailed together out of New York Harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rainforests of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. What they found would rewrite the West's understanding of human history.
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Unsung Explorers at the Heart of History
- By thomas on 01-10-17
By: William Carlsen
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Train
- Riding the Rails That Created the Modern World - from the Trans-Siberian to the Southwest Chief
- By: Tom Zoellner
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Tom Zoellner loves trains with a ferocious passion. In his new audiobook he chronicles the innovation and sociological impact of the railway technology that changed the world, and could very well change it again. From the frigid Trans-Siberian Railroad to the antiquated Indian Railways to the futuristic maglev trains, Zoellner offers a stirring story of man's relationship with trains. Zoellner examines both the mechanics of the rails and their engines and how they helped societies evolve. Not only do trains transport people and goods in an efficient manner, but they also reduce pollution and dependency upon oil.
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The world history of trains up to the present
- By matthew on 03-06-14
By: Tom Zoellner
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Beyond the Hundredth Meridian
- John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West
- By: Wallace Stegner
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 17 hrs and 5 mins
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Pulitzer Prize winner Wallace Stegner recounts the remarkable career of Major John Wesley Powell, the distinguished ethnologist and geologist who explored the Colorado River, the Grand Canyon, and the homeland of the Southwest Indian tribes. This classic work is a penetrating and insightful study of the Powell’s career, from the beginning of the Powell Survey, in which Powell and his men famously became the first to descend the Colorado River, to his eventual expulsion from the Geological Survey.
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History repeats itself.
- By Roy on 09-12-11
By: Wallace Stegner
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Uranium
- War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World
- By: Tom Zoellner
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Uranium is a common element in the earth's crust and the only naturally occurring mineral with the power to end all life on the planet. After World War II, it reshaped the global order---whoever could master uranium could master the world. Marie Curie gave us hope that uranium would be a miracle panacea, but the Manhattan Project gave us reason to believe that civilization would end with apocalypse.
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GREAT book, awful narration
- By Carolyn on 03-30-09
By: Tom Zoellner
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The Storm of the Century
- Tragedy, Heroism, Survival, and the Epic True Story of America's Deadliest Natural Disaster: The Great Gulf Hurricane of 1900
- By: Al Roker, William Hogeland
- Narrated by: Byron Wagner
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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On the afternoon of September 8, 1900, 200-mile-per-hour winds and 15-foot waves slammed into Galveston, the prosperous and growing port city on Texas' Gulf Coast. By dawn the next day, when the storm had passed, the city that had existed just hours before was gone. Shattered, grief-stricken survivors emerged to witness a level of destruction never before seen: 8,000 corpses littered the streets and were buried under the massive wreckage.
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Review of "The Storm of the Century "
- By S. Noe on 09-04-15
By: Al Roker, and others
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The Great Bridge
- The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge
- By: David McCullough
- Narrated by: Nelson Runger
- Length: 27 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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This monumental book tells the enthralling story of one of the greatest accomplishments in our nation's history, the building of what was then the longest suspension bridge in the world. The Brooklyn Bridge rose out of the expansive era following the Civil War, when Americans believed all things were possible.
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An Historian and not a Novelist
- By Tim on 06-01-12
By: David McCullough
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Rain
- A Natural and Cultural History
- By: Cynthia Barnett
- Narrated by: Christina Traister
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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It is elemental, mysterious, precious, destructive. It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of all the world's water. Yet this is the first audiobook to tell the story of rain.
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Mostly a cultural history
- By serine on 02-10-16
By: Cynthia Barnett
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Assembling California
- By: John McPhee
- Narrated by: Nelson Runger
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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At various times in a span of fifteen years, John McPhee made geological field surveys in the company of Eldridge Moores, a tectonicist at the University of California at Davis. The result of these trips is Assembling California, a cross-section in human and geologic time, from Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada through the golden foothills of the Mother Lode and across the Great Central Valley to the wine country of the Coast Ranges, the rock of San Francisco, and the San Andreas family of faults.
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Subduction leads to orogeny zones in California
- By Darwin8u on 11-30-13
By: John McPhee
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Chinese Rules
- Mao's Dog, Deng's Cat, and Five Timeless Lessons from the Front Lines in China
- By: Tim Clissold
- Narrated by: Stephen Critchlow
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Exploring key episodes in that nation's long political, military, and cultural history, Clissold outlines five Chinese Rules, which anyone can deploy in on-the-ground situations with modern Chinese counterparts. These Chinese rules will enable foreigners not only to cooperate with China but also to compete with it on its own terms.
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Two books in one, one excellent one boring
- By Ed Sander on 09-08-17
By: Tim Clissold
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Award-winning journalist and author Simon Winchester takes readers on a personal tour of the Balkans. Combining history and interviews with the people who live there, Winchester offers a fascinating glimpse into the complex issues at work in this chaotic region. Unrest in the Balkans has gone on for centuries. A seasoned reporter, Winchester visited the region twenty years ago. When Kosovo reached crisis level in 1997, Winchester thought a return visit to the beleaguered area would help to make sense out of the awful violence.
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Best-selling author Simon Winchester offers an enthralling biography of the Pacific Ocean and its role in the modern world, exploring our relationship with this imposing force of nature. Winchester's personal experience is vast and his storytelling second to none. And his historical understanding of the region is formidable, making Pacific a paean to this magnificent sea of beauty, myth, and imagination that is transforming our lives.
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What listeners say about A Crack in the Edge of the World
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Book reader
- 11-11-05
Another excellent book by Simon Winchester
As he did with "Krakatoa", Winchester follows seemingly unrelated, meandering paths which all converge in San Francisco in April, 1906. He sets the stage with a discussion of the geologic history of the North American continent, traces the development of San Francisco from a rough camp to a city and brings to life many of its more colorful citizens. As was the case with "Krakatoa", the author reads his own work and thereby enhances it. His enthusiasm for his topic radiates through the pages, but his delivery is so well polished that the book suffers not one whit from the choppier readings often encountered by narrators who are not professionally trained in voice. This was a great book and a great listening experience.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Alex
- 11-08-05
Very Interesting Story and Well Read
The only reason I didn't give this book five stars is that I try to reserve 5 stars for the very best and the book would be dry for some people with the geology. I have read or listened five or six other Simon Winchester books and have enjoyed all of them. I enjoy his combination of science, history, sociology and travel.
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3 people found this helpful
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- ManInTheHighFlat
- 08-16-18
Another fascinating yarn of history
read by the author, who is an excellent narrator, this is another engrossing tale from Simon Winchester. I wish all Audible narrators were so easy and enjoyable on the ears!
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Overall
- Lisa
- 11-18-05
Would you rather live in Hurricane Country?
The geology in the book was powerfully described and extremely interesting. As someone who lived in the Bay Area for more than 20 years and experienced the 1989 quake, I found the attitude in this book offensive. A key message of the book -over and over and over again- is that people shouldn't be living near or on the San Andreas fault. Has he considered the probabilities of hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis? Where would he have us all live? He showed a complete lack of empathy for those living in the Bay Area in 1906 or 1989.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Andy from FL
- 08-16-17
History read by a snob
I really wanted to like this book. I've been studying up on geology and earthquakes and thought this would be a good addition to my base of knowledge. He almost immediately takes a swipe at anyone who believes in God, which why in the world he felt the need to inject this was beyond me. Anyway, I brushed that away and kept listening. As Julia has already said, the first part is a history of geology. Personally I thought that part was pretty good but I didn't buy the book for a history of geology, I bought it for a history of the 1906 event. When he finally gets around to the earthquake it fell short in my opinion. It seemed he spent more time trying to convince the listener that San Fran citizens were anti-Chinese bigots than with the event itself.
I did find it interesting that he tied the San Fran earthquake to the Azusa Street Revival. That is a point in history that is rarely mentioned.
The last part of the book was outright torture. He recounts his 3,000+ mile journey to the Alaska pipeline in painful detail. Once he reaches the pipeline section that goes across the fault, he lets the reader know that he secretly wished he had some C4 explosives so he could blow the thing up....I kid you not. This guy DRIVES over 3,000 miles, burning gas the whole time, just to look at one of the man made creations that helped produce the fuel he needed to perform this task and his first thought isn't "Wow, wasn't this designed well!" No, to the contrary, his first thought is "Sure wish I had some plastic explosives." Keep sharp instruments away from this man please.
Finally, as if I needed more evidence to convince me this guy is a class A snob, he lets the reader know that the primary hallmark he uses to identify a town that is nothing but a habitation for white trash is.....get this....a Walmart.
I want my 7+ hrs of my life back.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Julia
- 11-13-05
This book does not succeed
Winchester can turn a phrase, but he doesn't succeed in creating a worthy book about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. He spends so much time detailing the history of geology, America, California, and San Francisco, that the earthquake doesn't even happen until the second part of the download. You might think all this additional information weaves a fabulous introduction to this horrendous event, but he bites off more than he can chew. The coverage of these many (many) ancillary areas winds up being superficial. Then, when he actually gets to the earthquake itself (after an eternity), it seems like he spends a lot of time citing boring statistics. I was hoping for more personal accounts. His idea of personal accounts is describing how a half dozen or so individuals determined the precise time of the earthquake, down to the second. The portion of the book devoted to the actual quake is really small, after which he again goes off on more superficial commentary on such topics as the immigration challenges of the Chinese.
The last 18 minutes is an interview with Winchester (which is also available on Audible as a free download). I recommend that you just listen to that instead, as it is a relatively pithy recount of the book.
If you simply must download this book, consider starting on Part 2.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Emily Conway
- 01-27-23
NOT the full version (and a rather alienating narration)
Without any indication there if, this seems to be an abridged version. The story seems thin and disjointed in parts and the sections cut in and out with unnecessary and distracting music intros and outros. If you’re interested in this story, do yourself a favor and find the 12+ hour version.
Beyond the abridged aspect, the author’s biases bleed through and color what would otherwise seem like a well-researched book. The author’s disdain of any non-western European scientists is both obvious and disappointing. Quite frankly, it seemed like the author would have been in favor of indefinitely continuing the Chinese Exclusion Act.
I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt and hoping that this abridged version omits important context that would make this book seem less like a history lecture by the type of man that would still unironically use the phrase “the White Man’s Burden.”
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