A Crack in the Edge of the World

I’ve now finished reading Simon Winchester’s book A Crack in the Edge of the World, and I have to say, I’m still rather divided about it. On the one hand, it’s a beautiful book, elegantly presented and well-written. On the other hand, I still feel like something’s missing.

Winchester has spent a great deal of time studying geology, and spends much of this book regurgitating that knowledge — but to what effect? Why do we need such a detailed description of the San Andreas Fault? Instead, I’d like to know more about the evidence for why we should expect another major San Francisco earthquake, or why, as Winchester predicts near the book’s end, Yellowstone Park is poised to become a massive, perpetually erupting volcano.

The description of the 1906 earthquake itself, though it consumes nearly 100 pages, still left me feeling lacking. Again, as I’ve suggested before, a more detailed map showing the affected areas and what types of damage occurred would have been much more effective than page after page of prose.

Yet there were some charming and heart rending descriptions of the quake’s effects, from a cattle stampede that led to the unfortunate death of a shopkeeper moments before the bull that attacked him was shot by a police officer, to the sketches of the legendary opera star Enrico Caruso, who was on tour in San Francisco with the Metropolitan Opera when the quake struck. Winchester even points out that Ansel Adams, then just 6 years old, acquired his characteristic crooked nose while fleeing from his home during the quake.

I do wish that the book had been written just a year later, when Winchester would have been able to compare the response to the earthquake to the New Orleans hurricane almost a century later. Even as it was, we do learn some compelling details about the San Francisco response. There was the immediate reaction of the presiding military officer, Brig. Gen. Frederick Funston, in mustering 155 troops and complying with the mayor’s order to shoot looters on sight. There was the train arriving from Los Angeles 16 hours after the quake with wagonloads of food. There was the act of Congress authorizing immediate shipment of 200,000 military rations and every tent in the U.S. military’s possession to San Francisco. Within weeks, ten percent of the U.S. standing army was in San Francisco. A century later, with all our technology, our nation’s response to a tragedy that was predicted in advance seems lethargic in contrast.

One of the most fascinating implications of the quake, Winchester demonstrates, was the rise of Pentacostalism. A struggling church on Azusa street in Los Angeles became the center of an explosive religious movement when itinerant preacher Frank Bartleman wrote a tract arguing that the San Francisco Quake was the “voice of God.” Though the roots of this movement can be traced years earlier, back to John Wesley in Britain, Winchester makes a convincing case that the Pentacostal movement would not have become the global phenomenon it is today, with its Swaggarts, its Bakkers, and yes, its Robertsons, if not for the particular resonance the San Francisco Quake struck with a smallish church on an obscure corner in L.A.

But if you’re interested in geology (or perhaps especially if you feel you’ve never acquired a foundation in the topic and want to know the basics), Winchester’s book offers an engaging angle into the science of how the earth works. Perhaps half the book is spent explaining how plate tectonics, earthquakes, and volcanoes work. Since that’s a subject about which I was already reasonably well informed, for me the book dragged in places. But I was entertained enough to stick it out to the end, and I found enough nuggets to feel it was worth the effort.

(My other observations about the book are here, here, and here)