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Book Review
California Earthquakes: Science, Risk, & the Politics of Hazard Mitigation. By Carl-Henry Geschwind. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. x, 337 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-8018-6596-4.)
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It seems safe to venture that most Americans today associate the risk of earthquakes with the state of California. How this association came to be is the subject of Carl-Henry Geschwind's new book. This study focuses on the history of earthquake awareness during the twentieth century, beginning with the 1906 San Francisco temblor. Geschwind notes that the legendary Bay Area shock was, at the time, largely interpreted as a freak occurrence. City boosters were at pains to note that San Francisco, and California more generally, were not, by any means, earthquake country, a position that of course helped to bolster the prospects for continued urbanization and real estate development. |
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