Which is incredibly long for an earthquake with the human tragedy and physical damage are dramatically and vividly captured in this book and by henry but on structures and though landscape is only part of the story that henry tells. His book is also a story of how a major Natural Disaster ginsberg scientific inquiries a map are centers around one individual in particular was a geologist he was not an earthquake expert better ride to the day after the earthquake to investigate what happened in the study that he produced help to confirm that now widely accepted idea of plate tectonics although at the time was controversial and much debated notion i will not even begin to get into that because you will get more of that from henry in a minute. This is his first book but he is skilled at combining the Human Interest story with the scientific advancement as a journalist and has been at the New York Times over two decades as a reporter or editor writing about science for much of that time and