A Dangerous Place: California's Unsettling Fate - Hardcover

Reisner, Marc

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679420118 ISBN 13: 9780679420118

Publisher: Pantheon Books, 2003

Synopsis

In A Dangerous Place, Marc Reisner leads us through California's improbable history and rise from a largely desert land to the most populated state in the nation, fueled by an economic engine more productive than all of Africa. Reisner believes that the achievement of this, the last great desert civilization, hinges on California's denial of its own inescapable fate. Both the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas sit astride two of the most violently seismic zones on the planet. The earthquakes that have already rocked California were, according to Reisner, mere prologues to a future cataclysm that will result in destruction of such magnitude that the only recourse will be to rebuild from the ground up. Reisner concludes A Dangerous Place with a hypothetical but chillingly realistic description of such a disaster and its horrifying after effects.

About this title

Review:

"If you are anxious about the safety of American cities, this book may give you a nervous breakdown. Reisner was an uncanny visionary and his testament is this terrifying warning note. It is not for the faint of heart."
--Mike Davis, author of "City of Quartz and Ecology of Fear
""A Dangerous Place represents an apocalyptic cadenza to Marc Reisner's lifetime of environmental prophecy. Facing his own end, Reisner--ever the moralist, ever the prophet of choice--invites us to contemplate the inevitable consequences of putting California where we have put it: atop, that is, a subterranean sea of seismic volatility that will one day, inevitably, reassert itself."
--Dr. Kevin Starr, author of "Americans and the California Dream

Nothing Stephen King has ever written is nearly as frightening. ("The San Diego Union-Tribune")

"Reisner manages the nearly impossible feat of explaining geopolitical history, hydro-engineering, plate tectonics and comparative seismology in an engaging, delightfully literate fashion. This important book will appeal to many, including those outside the Golden State. Environmentalists will naturally go for it, but Reisner's witty, concise prose will attract general readers, too." Publishers Weekly

"This posthumous work by the author of the award-winning Cadillac Desert is a fitting tribute to his environmental concerns and the power of his writing." Library Journal

"Nothing Stephen King has ever written is nearly as frightening." The San Diego Union-Tribune

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About the Author:

Marc Reisner worked for many years at the Natural Resources Defense Council. In 1979, he received an Alicia J. Patterson Journalism Fellowship and began the research for Cadillac Desert, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award nominee, the subject of a PBS television series, and was included in the Modern Library's list of the Twentieth Century's 100 Best Nonfiction Books in English. He was also the author of Game Wars. Reisner died in 2000.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0679420118
• ISBN 13: 9780679420118
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 181