I was one of Simon Winchester's students when he was a guest professor at San Jose State University while he was researching this book. It was my last semester as an undergraduate, and my writing benefited immensely from his guidance. So obviously I have a bit of a bias!

I am not as fascinated by tectonic plates as I am by people. However, Winchester is a trained geologists, and he describes geological events with clear analogies that help non-science-minded people like myself understand the formation of continents and fault lines. The history of any earthquake begins with the formation of the earth, and I appreciate his admirable effort to show that human enterprise is at the mercy of forces that are ancient and unstoppable.

The real meat for a humanist like me is the story of people who went through the earthquake, and I do wish that he had devoted more time to that. What was it like to live in the tent cities? Are there any first-person accounts of that? There is a bit of distance between the narrative and the personal experiences victims of the quake that I would have liked to see collapsed (no pun intended), but perhaps that would be suited to another kind of book.

Winchester makes a subtle point without outright contrast in depicting the government's response to the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire. In a time without 24-hour news feeds, email, fax machines or airplanes, the government promptly provided for victims of the earthquake. He knows that in the reader's mind will be the shameful response to Hurricane Katrina as contrast.

Also appreciated is Winchester's examples of how the quake's effects rippled sociologically and economically. We here in the Bay Area are united by our experiences of earthquakes, and he reminded me that the structure of a life I hold dear is very precarious indeed.