A Crack in the Edge of the World Audio Book by Simon Winchester Audio Book CD Brand New Unabridged (10 CDs 12.5 Hours):
The international bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman and Krakatoa vividly brings to life the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake that leveled a city symbolic of America's relentless western expansion. Simon Winchester has also fashioned an enthralling and informative look at the tumultuous subterranean world that produces earthquakes, the planet's most sudden and destructive force.
In the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, San Francisco and a string of towns to its north-northwest and the south-southeast were overcome by an enormous shaking that was compounded by the violent shocks of an earthquake, registering 8.25 on the Richter scale. The quake resulted from a rupture in a part of the San Andreas fault, which lies underneath the earth's surface along the northern coast of California. Lasting little more than a minute, the earthquake wrecked 490 blocks, toppled a total of 25,000 buildings, broke open gas mains, cut off electric power lines throughout the Bay area, and effectively destroyed the gold rush capital that had stood there for a half century.
Perhaps more significant than the tremors and rumbling, which affected a swatch of California more than 200 miles long, were the fires that took over the city for three days, leaving chaos and horror in its wake. The human tragedy included the deaths of upwards of 700 people, with more than 250,000 left homeless. It was perhaps the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.
Simon Winchester brings his inimitable storytelling abilities -- as well as his unique understanding of geology -- to this extraordinary event, exploring not only what happened in northern California in 1906 but what we have learned since about the geological underpinnings that caused the earthquake in the first place. But his achievement is even greater: he positions the quake's significance along the earth's geological timeline and shows the effect it had on the rest of twentieth-century California and American history. A Crack in the Edge of the World is the definitive account of the San Francisco earthquake. It is also a fascinating exploration of a legendary event that changed the way we look at the planet on which we live.
 About the Author Simon Winchester :
Simon Winchester turned sixty years old in 2004 and is enjoying the most popular success of his life. After color blindness prevented him from having a career in the British navy, Winchester received a degree in Geology from Oxford. It was while digging rocks that he discovered his ambitions lay in journalism.
Inspired by James Morris’ book, Coronation Everest, about Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay on the summit of Mount Everest on the day of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, Winchester contacted James Morris by mail and said he wanted to become a writer. Morris curtly suggested that if Winchester wanted to write, he should stop digging rocks. Heeding this advice, he left geology behind. Morris acted as a mentor and editor to Winchester, generously offering weekly comments on his early efforts as a journalist. As a new reporter with no experience in the field of newspaper reporting, Winchester was assigned to cover dog shows and the like. He was, in fact, a natural. He found stories where there seemingly were none and made a name for himself as a journalist.
Winchester worked as a reporter for The Guardian, The Daily Mail, and The Sunday Times. Somehow he managed to be everywhere of importance during the 1970’s. He covered the unrest in Northern Ireland, The Falkland Island War, the Jonestown Massacre, and the fall of President Richard Nixon.
In each case his personal involvement elevated his reporting. He was not merely covering the story; he became part of the story. This was especially true in the Falklands. Winchester’s reporting made him so conspicuous to the government of Argentina that he found himself arrested and charged with espionage. He was subsequently jailed in Tierra del Fuego and spent the next three months unsure of the possible outcome of the accusations while trying to maintain his composure surrounded by a wide variety of local criminals.
His correspondence combined the elements of great literature and adventure stories, and the personal voice of an erudite British scholar. So it was no surprise that he was able to publish his journalism in book form beginning with In Holy Terror (Faber 1974), a chronicle of his reporting from Ulster.
Winchester has continued publishing books on a wide variety of subjects. He collaborated with his mentor James Morris, who had become a woman named Jan Morris, on a book entitled Stones of Empire. Winchester enjoyed some success, but was not a household name despite having published over a dozen books and appearing regularly on television and radio. Then came the tale of one Dr. W. C. Minor.
It would seem a far-fetched idea that a book about a lunatic who contributed to the Oxford English Dictionary would become a huge best seller and make a star of its author, but that is exactly what happened with The Professor and the Madman.
Winchester attributes the success of the book to bad weather in New York. Because of the rain, claims Simon, everyone stayed indoors and read the paper seeing David Walton’s praising preview in the New York Times of The Professor and the Madman. By the end of the day, the book was number one on Amazon.com. This book has become known as a modern classic.
Combining elements of an adventure story, a mystery, and a tragedy The Professor and the Madman became a bestseller and freed Simon Winchester. In the years since the publication of The Professor and the Madman, each of Winchester’s subsequent books have reached best seller lists and have also been reviewed as favorably (William F. Buckley referred to Winchester’s The Meaning of Everything as “Supremely readable”).
Winchester divides his time between a flat in New York, a seventy-five acre farm in the Berkshires of Massachusetts (where he keeps horses, icelandic sheep, and an English pointer named Bailey), and a cottage in Scotland. He has three grown sons and is twice divorced. His most recent book, entitled A Crack in the Edge of the World, is undoubtedly the authoritative chronicle of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.
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