Earthquakes in Human History, by Jelle de Boer and Donald Sanders

Summary

Pro:

• Underscores the geologic foundations of societies in all ages
• Sidebars discuss bonus earthquakes and concepts
• Geology is given its due, but does not control the story

• Geologic detail sometimes goes on a paragraph too long
• A few more illustrations would be welcome
• Afterword and glossary are unnecessary

• Nine historic earthquakes are treated in detail
• Historical settings and aftermaths of quakes are a distinctive feature
• Line drawings and charts are informative and of high quality

Book Review

With 2006 being the centennial year of the most significant earthquake of them all, this is a good time for a book that adds context to the factoids. Earthquakes are more than just sets of geophysical statistics—they are messages for every society they affect. "Earthquakes in Human History" is a portfolio of nine earthquakes that were earthshaking in their effect on history.

After a succinct discussion of the basics of seismology—what causes earthquakes, how they are studied, and how they relate to the rest of geology—authors Jelle de Boer and Donald Sanders take us to the Holy Land and the biblical record. Earthquakes are the original "acts of God," appearing in numerous verses of the Old and New Testaments, and whereas Noah's Flood is clearly the stuff of prehistoric legend the damaging quakes of the Jordan Rift are documentable on the ground.

Sodom and Gomorrah's destruction is quite plausibly due to an earthquake that disrupted buried hydrocarbon layers in the Dead Sea graben. And King Herod's triumph over an Arab army in 31 BCE took advantage of an earthquake on the very day his Roman patrons, Antony and Cleopatra, lost the battle of Actium. Octavian, succeeding Antony, saw fit to confirm Herod as king of Judea, where the war hero later ruled during the time of Jesus' birth.

De Boer and Sanders are well suited to their subject—de Boer has applied geologic analysis to the Oracle of Delphi, among other scientific exploits. They cover the familiar earthquakes of Lisbon in 1755 and San Francisco in 1906 well, giving the social and political effects more careful attention than most accounts. Nowhere else have I seen the great American Midwest earthquake sequence of 1811-12, the worst recorded on this continent, linked to the political rise of the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, who prophesied the event. Nor did I know the story of how the devastating Kanto earthquake of 1923, which destroyed half the homes in Tokyo, jump-started Frank Lloyd Wright's career after his innovative Imperial Hotel rode out the quake undamaged during its inaugural gala luncheon.

Earthquakes in Human History, by Jelle de Boer and Donald Sanders

Princeton University Press

But the jewels of this book are its treatment of events within living memory—the 1970 Peru quake that buried the city of Yungay in a gigantic avalanche and the 1972 Nicaragua quake, best known in America for the plane crash that killed ballplayer Roberto Clemente on his way to help the relief effort. The long-lasting aftereffects on governments and citizens are similar to what we saw during and after hurricane Katrina. We need these examples of how, in our turn, we might cope—or fail—in the years and decades that follow such calamities.

Long after the hoopla around the 2006 San Francisco centennial is over, "Earthquakes in Human History" will have a permanent lesson to teach us, one made pithy by historian Will Durant: "Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice."