He 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. FROM THE CRITICS The New York Times : The California dream of A Dangerous Place is a kind of mass psychosis, when it hasn't been a trompe l'oeil born of greed and power. The West Coast's brief but hysterical 19th-century gold rush seized the American imagination. Greed and power took over in the face of an overwhelming fact: that for all its appearance and promise of Paradise, California is a distinctly inhospitable place to live. This is particularly true of Los Angeles, which, Reisner argues, is civilization's ultimate absurdity in urban form. — Steve Erickson The Washington Post As his death approached, Marc Reisner fought to see this book get into print. Its publication is both a timely warning about how we put ourselves in harm's way and an unshakable monument to a writer of vision and insight. — David Helvarg Publishers Weekly Reisner, author of the NBCC Award-nominated Cadillac Desert, offers here a dire but convincing assessment of the future of California. Why have millions settled in dense population centers, engaged in intensive farming and built vast manufacturing complexes on land fundamentally unfit for such development? In Part I, Reisner details the colonization of the state by rapacious missionaries and robber baron developers. After the land grabbing came the political scheming to somehow import water to largely dry southern California-a problem that still hasn't been substantively addressed. In Part II, he explains the more grave, geological instability underlying all this development. Shifting plate tectonics in the region guarantee earthquakes (it's just a question of when and how often). Aware of the human capacity for denial, Reisner unfolds-in classic you-are-there fashion-a not-quite-worst-case scenario of destruction in the Bay Area after a 7.2 Richter scale earthquake hits the Hayward fault in, say, 2005. The Bay Bridge collapses, buildings crumple, roads buckle and landslides carry away entire houses, inundating freeways. Even if buildings aren't atop major geological faults (and many are), if they're perched on landfill or loose soil they may succumb to subsurface liquefaction. Worse yet, artificial water supply systems become unusable, as levees collapse and saline water invades reservoirs. Reisner manages the nearly impossible feat of explaining geopolitical history, hydro-engineering, plate tectonics and comparative seismology in an engaging, delightfully literate fashion. His untimely death in 2000 (at age 51, of colon cancer) was a loss to both belles lettres and natural resources politics. Agent, Joe Spieler. (Feb. 11) Forecast: 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. Library Journal : 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. Reisner focuses here on the major population centers of the San Francisco Bay (where he resided until his death.

 Knopf Publishing Group 0679420118 / 9780679420118
Hardcover New Condition New book Jacket New York 

Price: 19.31 USD