Earth-Shattering Events by Andrew Robinson

Earth-Shattering Events by Andrew Robinson

"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.

'An enlightening read [that] places earthquakes into proper historical perspectiveRobinson captures the reader’s attention [and] the chronological organization of Earth-Shattering Events allows the reader to easily follow the evolution of our understanding of earthquakes' - Science
'Robinson has a talent for evoking chaos and, unavoidably, his brain-melting descriptions have a disaster-movie quality - it's hard to tear your eye away from the page ' - Daily Telegraph
'A compelling history of seismicity and society' - Nature
'A truly welcome, and refreshing, study that puts earthquake impact on history into a proper perspective' - Amos Nur, author of Apocalypse: Earthquakes, Archaeology and the Wrath of God
'Fascinating and fact-rich ... enlightening and intriguing ... innovative and persuasive' - The Times
'Individually, these case studies make vivid reading, and collectively they tell a fascinating story about how seismology developed as a science' - Physics World
'Delightfully un-academic but thoughtfully structured ... thought-provoking' - Geoscientist

Andrew Robinson is the author of twenty-five books in the arts and sciences, nine of them on aspects of Indian history and culture. They include two definitive biographies: Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye, described by V. S. Naipaul as ‘an extraordinarily good, detailed and selfless book’, and the coauthored Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man. He holds degrees from Oxford University and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, has been a Visiting Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge, and is currently a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9780500518595
ISBN 10	0500518599
Titel	Earth-Shattering Events
Autor	Andrew Robinson
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Hardback
Verlag	Thames & Hudson Ltd
Erscheinungsjahr	2016-05-09
Seitenanzahl	256
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.