The Great Quake
How the Biggest Earthquake in North America Changed Our Understanding of the Planet
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Narrated by:
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Robert Fass
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By:
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Henry Fountain
About this listen
New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
A riveting narrative about the biggest earthquake in North American recorded history - the 1964 Alaska earthquake that demolished the city of Valdez and swept away the island village of Chenega - and the geologist who hunted for clues to explain how and why it took place.
At 5:36 p.m. on March 27, 1964, a magnitude 9.2 earthquake - the second most powerful in world history - struck the young state of Alaska. The violent shaking, followed by massive tsunamis, devastated the southern half of the state and killed more than 130 people. A day later George Plafker, a geologist with the US Geological Survey, arrived to investigate. His fascinating scientific detective work in the months that followed helped confirm the then-controversial theory of plate tectonics.
In a compelling tale about the almost unimaginable brute force of nature, New York Times science journalist Henry Fountain combines history and science to bring the quake and its aftermath to life in vivid detail. With deep on-the-ground reporting from Alaska, often in the company of George Plafker, Fountain shows how the earthquake left its mark on the land and its people - and on science.
©2017 Henry Fountain (P)2017 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Sarcastic
- By Cynthia Hartman on 06-16-16
By: Simon Winchester
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The Gulf
- The Making of an American Sea
- By: Jack E. Davis
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 20 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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When painter Winslow Homer first sailed into the Gulf of Mexico, he was struck by its "special kind of providence." Indeed, the Gulf presented itself as America's sea - bound by geography, culture, and tradition to the national experience - and yet, there has never been a comprehensive history of the Gulf until now. And so, in this rich and original work that explores the Gulf through our human connection with the sea, environmental historian Jack E. Davis finally places this exceptional region into the American mythos in a sweeping history that extends from the Pleistocene age to the 21st century.
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Decolonize gulf history
- By Jesse Carr on 05-02-18
By: Jack E. Davis
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Ruthless Tide
- The Heroes and Villains of the Johnstown Flood, America’s Astonishing Gilded Age Disaster
- By: Al Roker
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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A gripping narrative history of the 1889 Johnstown Flood - the deadliest flood in US history - from New York Times best-selling author, NBC host, and legendary weather authority Al Roker. May 1889: After a deluge of rainfall swelled the Little Conemaugh River, panicked engineers watched helplessly as swiftly rising waters threatened to breach the South Fork Dam in central Pennsylvania. Though they telegraphed neighboring towns, warning of the impending danger, residents, used to false alarms, remained in their homes. At 3:10 p.m., the dam gave way....
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Mispronunciation bothers me
- By Tracy on 09-08-18
By: Al Roker
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Travels in Siberia
- By: Ian Frazier
- Narrated by: Ian Frazier
- Length: 20 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Ian Frazier trains his eye for unforgettable detail on Siberia, that vast expanse of Asiatic Russia. He explores many aspects of this storied, often grim region. He writes about the geography, the resources, the native peoples, the history, the 40-below midwinter afternoons, the bugs. The book brims with Mongols, half-crazed Orthodox archpriests, fur seekers, ambassadors of the czar bound for Peking, tea caravans, German scientists, American prospectors, intrepid English nurses, and prisoners and exiles of every kind....
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I Loved This Book
- By Sara on 01-05-14
By: Ian Frazier
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Northland
- A 4,000-Mile Journey Along America's Forgotten Border
- By: Porter Fox
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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America's northern border is the world's longest international boundary, yet it remains obscure even to Americans. Travel writer Porter Fox spent two years exploring its length by canoe, freighter, and car - and in Northland, he delivers the little-known history of the region and a riveting account of his travels. Fox follows explorer Samuel de Champlain's adventures; recounts the rise and fall of the iron, wheat, and timber industries; crosses the Great Lakes on a freighter; and tracks America's fur traders through the Boundary Waters.
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Great listen - great narrator
- By Jonathan on 01-10-19
By: Porter Fox
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The Johnstown Flood
- By: David McCullough
- Narrated by: Edward Herrmann
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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At the end of the last century, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was a booming coal-and-steel town filled with hardworking families striving for a piece of the nation's burgeoning industrial prosperity. In the mountains above Johnstown, an old earth dam had been hastily rebuilt to create a lake for an exclusive summer resort patronized by the tycoons of that same industrial prosperity, among them Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellon.
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A page-turner! HIstory that reads like a novel
- By Susan K Donley on 06-17-05
By: David McCullough
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The Good Rain
- Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest
- By: Timothy Egan
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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A fantastic book! Timothy Egan describes his journeys in the Pacific Northwest through visits to salmon fisheries, redwood forests and the manicured English gardens of Vancouver. Here is a blend of history, anthropology and politics.
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White man bad, capitalism bad
- By Forget about it on 04-15-21
By: Timothy Egan
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Life on the Mississippi
- An Epic American Adventure
- By: Rinker Buck
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 15 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Seven years ago, readers and listeners around the country fell in love with a singular American voice: Rinker Buck, whose infectious curiosity about history launched him across the West in a covered wagon pulled by mules and propelled his book about the trip, The Oregon Trail, to ten weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Now, Buck returns to chronicle his latest incredible adventure: building a wooden flatboat from the bygone era of the early 1800s and journeying down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.
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Too Political and Divisive
- By Bill on 08-29-22
By: Rinker Buck
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Visit Sunny Chernobyl
- And Other Adventures in the World's Most Polluted Places
- By: Andrew Blackwell
- Narrated by: Ax Norman
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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For most of us, traveling means visiting the most beautiful places on Earth - Paris, the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon. It’s rare to book a plane ticket to visit the lifeless moonscape of Canada’s oil sand strip mines, or to seek out the Chinese city of Linfen, legendary as the most polluted in the world. But in Visit Sunny Chernobyl, Andrew Blackwell embraces a different kind of travel, taking a jaunt through the most gruesomely polluted places on Earth.
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Better than I predicted
- By Paul Luthi on 08-23-13
By: Andrew Blackwell
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The Great Hurricane
- 1938
- By: Cherie Burns
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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On the night of September 20, 1938, the news on the radio was full of Hitler's pending invasion of Czechoslovakia. Severe weather wasn't mentioned; only light rain was forecast for the following day. In a matter of hours, however, a hurricane of unprecedented force would tear through one of the wealthiest and most populated stretches of coastline in America, obliterating communities from Long Island to Providence, destroying entire fishing fleets from Montauk to Narragansett Bay.
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Mesmerizing book!
- By Tracey on 04-23-13
By: Cherie Burns
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Windfall
- The Booming Business of Global Warming
- By: McKenzie Funk
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Global warming's physical impacts can be separated into three broad categories: melt, drought, and deluge. Funk travels to two dozen countries to profile entrepreneurial people who see a potential windfall in each of these forces. The melt is a boon for newly arable, mineral rich regions of the Arctic, such as Greenland - and for the man-made snow trade. Drought creates opportunities for private firefighters working for insurance companies as well as for fund managers backing south Sudanese warlords who control local farmland.
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unintended windfalls mixed with obvious perils
- By Andy on 02-09-14
By: McKenzie Funk
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The Galveston Hurricane of 1900
- The Deadliest Natural Disaster in American History
- By: Charles River Editors
- Narrated by: Steve Rausch
- Length: 1 hr and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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The hurricane that struck Galveston, Texas, on September 8, 1900, killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people. Prior to advanced communications, few people knew about impending hurricanes except those closest to the site. In the days before television or even radio, catastrophic descriptions were merely recorded on paper, limiting our understanding of the immediate impact. Thus it was inevitable that the category 4 hurricane would cause almost inconceivable destruction.
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The Hurricane
- By scott massey on 06-14-24
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The Secret Life of Lobsters
- By: Trevor Corson
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In this intimate portrait of an island lobstering community and an eccentric band of renegade biologists, journalist Trevor Corson escorts the listener onto the slippery decks of fishing boats, through danger-filled scuba dives, and deep into the churning currents of the Gulf of Maine to learn about the secret undersea lives of lobsters.
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Uninteresting and poorly written
- By Alexandra DuSablon on 01-10-20
By: Trevor Corson
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Ice Ghosts
- The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition
- By: Paul Watson
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Ice Ghosts weaves together the epic story of the Lost Franklin Expedition of 1845 - whose two ships and crew of 129 were lost to the Arctic ice - with the modern tale of the scientists, divers, and local Inuit behind the incredible discovery of the flagship's wreck in 2014. Paul Watson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was on the icebreaker that led the discovery expedition, tells a fast-paced historical adventure story: Sir John Franklin and the crew of the HMS Erebus and Terror setting off in search of the fabled Northwest Passage.
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Flawed Writing Dashes High Hopes :(
- By Gillian on 03-31-17
By: Paul Watson
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What listeners say about The Great Quake
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Johnny Rockaway
- 06-24-18
Very Compelling and Humbling Story
A cautionary tale that's filled with resilience and the pursuit of facts, facts that someday may save lives. I'd recommend our current CIC take a listen and a lesson about the power of nature. and how things once not understood or believed, ultimately have been proven by decades of science. The truth is not false simply because there are doubters .
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- Cheryl H.
- 12-09-19
Extremely interesting!
I didn’t know much about this event, but I also learned a lot about earthquakes and geology. Read well too.
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- Joan Tenenbaum
- 11-17-17
Reads like a page-turner crime story
Fascinating and well written. I arrived in Alaska less than a decade after the earthquake and its impact was still very visible in many places. Half of Fourth Avenue was still sunken and not yet rebuilt. I visited Chenega village and stood in the schoolhouse.
I loved the way the author follows several people in different places throughout the book and how he develops the necessary background in stages. We get a great understanding of plate tectonics written for everyone.
For me, having lived and visited most of the places he describes, it was thrilling and vivid but I think it would be so even for someone who had never been there.
A fabulous read and performance. Five stars all around.
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- David W. Cooper
- 02-04-23
Pacific NW readers take notice
This book is a good blend of personal stories and science. It is estimated that another quake of this size in Alaska is 600 to 800 years away. On the Oregon and Washington coasts a big quakes has happened every 3 to 4 hundred years. The last one was 350 years ago.
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- David
- 10-01-17
Tectonic plate primer + a good story
A good integration of geology theory development with a good retelling of the great earthquake in 1964.
I enjoy Simon Winchester's books. This feels like one of his books.
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1 person found this helpful
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- jeffrey s.
- 08-20-20
Enjoyed this one
story is gr8. one or 2 chapters on technicalities and science were not 4 me, but have 2 b there. if u love the science, it's a bonus.
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- Ann
- 12-09-22
A good history
Not as much geology as i had hoped. It was a good history of the before, during and after, though
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1 person found this helpful
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- Jeop1986
- 03-29-24
Gripping and Suspenseful
Great blend of personal stories, vivid descriptions of the disaster, and the science behind it.
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- Donald Hill
- 08-31-17
There is Nothing about the Book I Didn't Like!
Where does The Great Quake rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Of the 45 audio books I have finished this year, I would rank The Great Quake in the top 10.
What was one of the most memorable moments of The Great Quake?
I would highly recommend Henry Fountain as an author. This book is about the Alaskan earthquake of 1964. I had only experienced this tragic event in documentaries and articles. Henry Fountain does something amazing in the story line, which I am a fan of, in a big way. He blends the story of George Plafker, who was a geologist with the US Geological Survey (a major character in the book) with the story about the victims of the quake, focusing on the early years of a school teacher, Kris Madsen Van Winkle, another major character in the book.
The story involves an emotional tale of the heartache with the loss of life among the residents in the village of Chenega, where Kris Madsen was a teacher in a one room school house at the time of the earthquake. The story is also about the residents of Valdez, and how hard there community was struck by the destruction and loss of life from the earthquake.
However, the story involves a great triumph involving the genius of George Plafker, geologist par excellence! What an amazing piece of journalism. Fountain made many trips to see Plafker and get his story (stated in the Acknowledgments). He provided an excellent background on Plafker's life and accomplishments. He also visited Kris Van Winkle and provided another human interest story on the background of her life as well.
Which scene was your favorite?
I am not a professional scientist, rather a technologist. But I have a great passion for science. My favorite part in this book was describing the detective work by George Plafker during the aftermath of the quake. I have a fairly good understanding of plate tectonics, which causes continental drift. However, I had no idea what a pivotal role George Plafker played in the eventual acceptance of the theory, first put forth by Alfred Wegener in the early 20th century.
If you have little, or no interest in the science of geology, this book may not be the book for you. But is you like to read a well blended story about human interest in communities affected by the earthquake that hit Alaska in the early 1960s, along with an in-depth explanation of what caused the quake and created such profound after-effects, you would certainly enjoy this book.
Any additional comments?
A big thank you to Henry Fountain for telling the story of George Plafker, along with his major contribution to geology and our understanding about the causes of earthquakes. If I had never read this book, I am not sure I would have ever learned about such a great man and his direct contribution to science.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-05-21
Story of the 1964 earthquake
But much more about the people it impacted and the growth of earthquake geology. Wonder story!
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