Customer Reviews

The Big One: The Earthquake That Rocked Early America and Helped Create a Science

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I don't quite know what to say about this book. The Big One is a difficult book to put a number rating on really. For one thing I'm not quite sure for whom it was written. It strikes me as a "publish-or-perish" kind of production. I enjoyed the book, but only because I enjoy anything on geology. This said, I will point out the merits of the book from the point of various populations of readers.

The average adult with only the very meagerest background, if any, in geology and natural sciences might well enjoy the book-certainly the title and the cover blurb are designed to hook in such a reader-but he/she might be better served by spending the money on a more general title, the focus of which is learning the basics of these sciences. Certainly there are a wide number of such books out there, many of them textbooks for survey courses at the general college level. Just searching Amazon's own list, I turned up thousands of them.

The authors' stated goal was to describe the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812, and the first few chapters do an admirable job of it. Unfortunately they tend to get off the track with their discussion of basic geology and don't return to their main topic until the end of the book where they speculate on the effects of a similar event in the future. I had the distinct feeling that they had only a slender amount to say about New Madrid and padded the volume out with a discussion of basic geology for the beginner. I certainly can't imagine a professional geologist reading the book when most of the information contained in it can be found with more precision and detail in professional journals.

Of their aim to demonstrate that the New Madrid quakes provided the impetus to the development of seismology and geology as disciplines, I'm not certain they achieved their goal.
While many people were interested in this event and a number of witnesses attempted to quantify as well as describe it, I'm not certain that this qualifies as any more than a minor branch root of these fields, an interesting aside. Again, if one has an interest in the history of geology, one can find other books that will give a broader and more connected narrative of the personalities and development of this field.

The primary population to whom I'd wholeheartedly recommend The Big One is to libraries that provide books on scientific topics for young people. For advanced students of middle/junior high or interested senior high, the book would be a splendid introduction to the topics of seismology and the geosciences as professions through the intriguing narrative these specific earthquakes and their effects on the people in the area. The book is especially good because it also discusses quackery in earthquake prediction and describes specifically what can and cannot be known about seismic events. It also defines geological terms that have come into the more ill-defined vernacular of journalism and tend to mislead. Furthermore, it describes how such irresponsible journalism can produce public panic that can needlessly cost millions of dollars, while debate about the expense of building codes illustrates how government and science work to protect affected regions. Young people trained to look beyond the headlines for solid information and who pay attention to the particulars of debates over codes, etc. are more likely to be sensible and responsible citizens.

For THOSE WRITING PAPERS on geology, seismology, history, journalism, political science, and urban planning. One might look at how the mythology of the New Madrid quakes grew from the actual events. What human needs were met by this mythology? What kind of distortion do you think may have occurred and why? One might look at how interpretation of published accounts has allowed geologists to fine tune their evaluation of the New Madrid earthquakes and how they fit into plate tectonics. Why did some earlier researchers feel some of the accounts were due to hysteria, while even later researchers believed them to be true. What kinds of things were each looking at? What data did each use to evaluate the narratives? One might look at how governments like that of Peru got almost unavoidably carried away by the quake quackery. Were the responses of these foreign governments any different from the responses of local governments in the US as described by the book? What human issues underline the similarities and differences in these responses? What suggestions, if any, would you make to avoid panic? To what extent is journalism responsible for promoting this type of panic? How might it be held accountable? Can it be held accountable? One might look at the issues of building codes in earthquake prone areas. Do you think that California and the New Madrid area should have similar codes? Why? If not, how should they differ?

This book is easy to read. However it jumps from topic to topic without much transistion. It really is more about seismology than about the New Madrid earthquake. It updated my knowledge of the field. It has been 15 to 20 years since I read about plate techtonics in Scientific American. The science has come a long way.

This book is a nice,safe,summary of the subject of earthquakes.What this book does is show that the knowledge of earthquakes is still in it's infancy;despite the fact that earthquakes have been around since the beginning of time;and studied,documented,and written about for almost as long.
It seems that each new quake tends to weaken any prediction theory built on the past.As a matter of faith,we all expect big ones to occur,but no idea of when or where.
The track record on earthquake prediction is to predict them in broad terms and far enough into the future that people forget about that prediction and occupy themselves with the latest guesses.On top of that,it always seems that after an earthquake occurs,all kinds of stuff comes out of the woodwokk that claim occurrences were taking place,and if only heeded,would have forewarned us of the quake;but invariably after the fact.
On the back of this book is a statement:
"The earthquake that rocked Early America and helped create a science." I suggest that it may have helped create an industry;the science still remains to be developed.
Another book I recently read was "A Dangerous Place" by Marc Reisner,see my review of Sept 26,2004.He contemplates the inevitable consequences of a major quake occurring near Oakland,Calif. on the Hayward Fault.It's quite good.
It seems that the answer to the big one is still to be found.

Well, this book had the premise of being a very good, fascinating account of the New Madrid earthquake. The first chapter of the book even starts out with a account of what happened. Then it starts talking about the theory of predictions, why earthquakes happen, why this one might have happened. It was pretty evident that two authors wrote this book. This book goes in all sorts of directions, but the actual one in which it was supposed to go.

Unlike other books, this one was was not smooth and was hard to follow. Even though it was a short book, it took twice as long to read as one considerably thicker but more interesting. I also doubt it is the definitive history of this early American earthquake.

The BIg One is more like USA Today than John McPhee - it's written at about an 8th grade level and doesn't tell much. You'll come out not knowing much more than you went in with. There are strange statements here, such as that the 1811 quake killed about 1500 people, while in fact no one knows how many - if any - deaths there were. The pitch that the quake "helped create a science" is also wrong - the quake had no role in the science's growth just because no one knows what caused it. There are lots of good popular geology books out there - but this isn't one of them.

Let me start by saying I liked this book. In spite of some obvious shortfalls that I'll discuss it was an interesting book that held my attention. There are, of course, many books now on the topic of earthquakes in general and the New Madrid quakes specifically. This one doesn't necessarily advance the genre greatly, but I think it is a nice addition. It seems be quite even-handed. Other than describing almost every earthquake with adjectives like tremendous or huge, there is very little sensationalism in the book and in fact, many sensational claims are toned down and adjusted by the authors. This book is a bit hard to categorize. It sells itself, in part, as a book on the New Madrid earthquakes, which it basically is; however, a large portion of the book deviated to cover the history of seismology. During the whole middle part of the book reference is made to people who were first interested in studying earthquakes in various places and to events that happened elsewhere. The book seems to be suggesting that at the end there will be an explantion of the causes of the New Madrid quakes but it turns out that there really isn't. So basically, this is a book that wanders somewhat. I would say that this is not necessarily a drawback though. The authors do not get into a chapter-by-chapter rundown of historical earthquakes like many books on similar topics, and they do not spend the whole time describing every single detail of the New Madrid events. So the book does end up being interesting and a good read that moves along briskly and keeps the reader's attention. I have read many books on earthquakes. What I like about this one is that it seems to include some of the most recent ideas and advances. If you are a layperson that is generally interested in these things, you will most likely find this to be a fun book that's easy to read and easy to believe.