Philip L. Fradkin

I came to this book and the two that followed it by a natural progression.

I am curious about my surroundings, and I have lived adjacent to the San Andreas Fault for the last thirty years, alternating within a few miles between the Pacific tectonic plate and the North American plate. As a journalist and resident of California since 1960, I am quite familiar with disasters, having observed all types and having been a victim of fires and floods. I wrote in The Seven States of California that there were three ways to deal with such disasters: leave the state, take up religion, or live one day at a time, the last being my personal preference.

So I set out to explore the splitting of the earth's crust, my designated batter for exploring the effect of nature on humans, first in a general overview and California-centered book, Magnitude 8, then in a wilderness setting, Wildest Alaska., and finally in an urban setting The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906. In this manner my Earthquake Trilogy unfolded.