This is the coolest earthquake-preparedness book ever published. Predicated on the assumption that the Big One is all but imminent, The L.A. Earthquake Sourcebook combines practical advice with compelling graphics--an essay advising the reader what to include in a personal disaster "supplies kit," for instance, is illustrated with a comic that gives voice to a more jaundiced view of disaster preparedness, in which a character anticipates, "Three days after the quake, panic sets in. Marauders who didn't prepare will go foraging for food. There'll be gangs... There'll be looting..." The result is a highly useful and readable compendium of the latest knowledge and scientific data about earthquake preparedness and recovery by educational institutions, civic agencies and individual experts in a wide variety of fields that manages to also be timely, realistic and even entertaining. This striking volume was designed by award-winning New York-based graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister and includes illustrations by designers and artists including Paul McCreery, Vincent Hui and Katherine Siy, as well as a number of excerpts from renowned authors such as Joan Didion, Lawrence Weschler and John McPhee. Created by Art Center College of Design students and faculty, and edited by David Ulin, Book Review Editor for the Los Angeles Times, the publication also includes an introductory essay by former FEMA Director James Lee Witt.
David L. Ulin is book critic of the Los Angeles Times. From 2005 to 2010, he was the paper's book editor. He is the author of "The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time" and "The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith," selected as a best book of 2004 by the Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle.
He is also the editor of three anthologies: "Cape Cod Noir," "Another City: Writing from Los Angeles," and the Library of America's "Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology," which won a 2002 California Book Award. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Black Clock, Columbia Journalism Review, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered.
He was awarded a 2010 Southern California Independent Booksellers Association/Glenn Goldman Book Award for his work on "Los Angeles: Portrait of a City."
