Summary of Simon Winchester's A Crack in the Edge of the World

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The earthquake in Ecuador in 1906 was the most powerful ever recorded by the machines of man. It destroyed the island port of Tumaco, and killed as many as 2,000 people.

#2 There were several large earthquakes in the Caribbean in the 1970s, and they did not kill anyone. But they did trigger a burst of smaller earthquakes, which went on for two or three weeks. The island of St Lucia was designated an earthquake-prone territory.

#3 The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1906 was the most severe in Europe for 300 years. The villages of Bosco Trecase, San Giuseppe, Ottajano, Poggiomarino, and Somma were all covered in several feet of ash, and some had to be hastily abandoned.

#4 The most active year of the twentieth century was 1906, which was characterized by a series of earthquakes in major cities. The year was also the most seismically dangerous of the century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822518889

IRB Media

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Insights on Simon Winchester's A Crack in the Edge of the World

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The earthquake in Ecuador in 1906 was the most powerful ever recorded by the machines of man. It destroyed the island port of Tumaco, and killed as many as 2,000 people.

#2

There were several large earthquakes in the Caribbean in the 1970s, and they did not kill anyone. But they did trigger a burst of smaller earthquakes, which went on for two or three weeks. The island of St Lucia was designated an earthquake-prone territory.

#3

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1906 was the most severe in Europe for 300 years. The villages of Bosco Trecase, San Giuseppe, Ottajano, Poggiomarino, and Somma were all covered in several feet of ash, and some had to be hastily abandoned.

#4

The most active year of the twentieth century was 1906, which was characterized by a series of earthquakes in major cities. The year was also the most seismically dangerous of the century.

#5

I first saw San Francisco in the early seventies, at the end of a long westward drive that had taken me clear across the North American continent. I had been driving westwards from a city on the plains for the better part of a week, over prairies, ranges, salt flats, and deserts. I decided to spend the night there, making my final miles to San Francisco in the morning.

#6

I traveled to Mount Diablo to see the wild animals that lived there. The naming of Mount Diablo has a more complicated history than it seems. It was named after the Spanish, who in the sixteenth century had extended their empire of New Spain northwards from Mexico into what was eventually to be named California.

#7

The mountain was named after the Spanish word for thicket, which was how the Spaniards described the thicket of willow and bay laurel trees where the Miwoks had hidden from the soldiers. The name has endured for the better part of two centuries.

#8

The mountain was named after the Devil by the dullards who wanted to christen it Coal Hill. But the rocks of Diablo were beginning to throw up mineral wealth, and by the middle of the nineteenth century, there were many people making modest fortunes from them.

#9

The discovery of coal on the slopes of Mount Diablo coincided with the ending of placer gold mining in Sacramento, forty miles to the east. The relative ease with which gold had been extracted from the ground was as evanescent as it was seductive.

#10

The more spectacular the mountain range, the more we tend to take it for granted. We rarely stop to wonder why a particular mountain is where it is, and we often assume that there is a river somewhere within its folds.

#11

The geology of California is complex, and Mount Diablo is a perfect example of that. The mountaintop is made of rocks that were slightly heavier than those of the cliffs and hills of North America, causing it to sink lower than the American hills.

#12

The San Francisco Bay region was formed when an oceanic plate suddenly changed direction and moved north-westwards, scraping past the coast