Short description:

Tracing the history of seismology and the rise of the regulatory state and of environmental awareness, California Earthquakes tells how earthquake-hazard management came about, why some groups assisted and others fought it, and how scientists and engineers helped shape it.

Long description:

Winner of the Book Prize of the Forum for the History of Science in America from the History of Science Society

In 1906, after an earthquake wiped out much of San Francisco, leading California officials and scientists described the disaster as a one-time occurrence and assured the public that it had nothing to worry about. California Earthquakes explains how, over time, this attitude changed, and Californians came to accept earthquakes as a significant threat, as well as to understand how science and technology could reduce this threat.

Carl-Henry Geschwind tells the story of the small group of scientists and engineers who?in tension with real estate speculators and other pro-growth forces, private and public?developed the scientific and political infrastructure necessary to implement greater earthquake awareness. Through their political connections, these reformers succeeded in building a state apparatus in which regulators could work together with scientists and engineers to reduce earthquake hazards. Geschwind details the conflicts among scientists and engineers about how best to reduce these risks, and he outlines the dramatic twentieth-century advances in our understanding of earthquakes?their causes and how we can try to prepare for them.

Tracing the history of seismology and the rise of the regulatory state and of environmental awareness, California Earthquakes tells how earthquake-hazard management came about, why some groups assisted and others fought it, and how scientists and engineers helped shape it.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Reactions to the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906
Chapter 2. Setting Up a Scientific Infrastructure - Seismology California Style, 1910-1925
Chapter 3. Bailey Willis and the Promotion of Earthquake Safety in the Mid-1920s
Chapter 4. Engineering a Regulatory-State Apparatus - Seismic Safety in the 1930s
Chapter 5. Earthquake Experts and the Cold War State
Chapter 6. New Initiatives for Earthquake Preparedness, 1964-1971
Chapter 7. Seismic Politics - Responses to the San Fernando Earthquake of 1971
Chapter 8. Pushing Prediction - Establishment of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program
Chapter 9. The Regulatory-State Apparatus in Action
Abbreviations
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index