Earth-Shattering Events: Earthquakes, Nations and Civilization

Earth-Shattering Events: Earthquakes, Nations and Civilization

Andrew Robinson
Our Price:  £6.99
List Price:  £23.44
Saving Of:  70%

Availability:  

  

In stock

Author:  Andrew Robinson
Condition:  New
Format:  Hardback
Pages:  256
Publisher:  Thames & Hudson Ltd
Year:  2016
ISBN:  9780500518595

"A truly welcome and refreshing study that puts earthquake impact on history into a proper perspective" --Amos Nur, Emeritus Professor of Geophysics, Stanford University, California, and author of Apocalypse: Earthquakes, Archaeology, and the Wrath of God.

Since antiquity, on every continent, human beings in search of attractive landscapes and economic prosperity have made a Faustian bargain with the risk of devastation by an earthquake. Today, around half of the world's largest cities - as many as sixty - lie in areas of major seismic activity. Many, such as Lisbon, Naples, San Francisco, Tehran and Tokyo, have been severely damaged or destroyed by earthquakes in the past. But throughout history, starting with ancient Jericho, Rome and Sparta, cities have proved to be extraordinarily resilient: only one, Port Royal in the Caribbean, was abandoned after an earthquake.

Earth-Shattering Events seeks to understand exactly how humans and earthquakes have interacted, not only in the short term but also in the long perspective of history. In some cases, physical devastation has been followed by decline. But in others, the political and economic reverberations of earthquake disasters have presented opportunities for renewal. After its wholesale destruction in 1906, San Francisco went on to flourish, eventually giving birth to the high-tech industrial area on the San Andreas fault known as Silicon Valley. An earthquake in Caracas in 1812 triggered the creation of new nations in the liberation of South America from Spanish rule. Another in Tangshan in 1976 catalysed the transformation of China into the world's second largest economy.

The growth of the scientific study of earthquakes is woven into this far-reaching history. It began with a series of earthquakes in England in 1750. Today, seismologists can monitor the vibration of the planet second by second and the movement of tectonic plates millimetre by millimetre. Yet, even in the 21st century, great earthquakes are still essentially 'acts of God', striking with much less warning than volcanoes, floods, hurricanes and even tornadoes and tsunamis.
You may also like
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Ocean Vuong
Condition: New
£8.99   £4.99

'A marvel' Marlon James

Brilliant, heart-breaking and highly original, discover Ocean Vuong's shattering coming of age novel.

This is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began ...


Walls: A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick
David Frye
Condition: New
£20.00   £6.99

and visit some of the seventy border walls that have been erected in just the past decade.

With provocative insight, Walls charts the centuries-long uneasy tension between the walled and unwalled, showing that walls profoundly shape the human psyche.


Nations in Transit 2005: Democratization from Central Europe to Eurasia
Freedom House
Condition: New
£24.95

Measures progress and setbacks in democratization in 27 countries from Central Europe to the Eurasian region of the Former Soviet Union. A report on Kosovo appears as an addendum to the Serbia and Montenegro report. This book covers events from January 1 through December 31.