The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith

Rating:
Summary: Meandering
Review: Although I found the book well written, ultimately I was frustrated with the author's meandering and indirect writing style. If you have a lot of patience, and are interested in the myths people hold about their ability to predict earthquakes, then this book is for you. I do not have either quality. I just wanted an engaging and straight forward account of current research into the science of earthquake prediction. I did not get it.

Rating:
Summary: Myth and Reality in Earthquake Country
Review: David Ulin, writer and Angelino, has the same needs as anyone else living in southern California, including the need to somehow come to grips with life in earthquake country. The Myth Of Solid Ground is the extended version of his physical and intellectual wanderings on the way to learning to become comfortable with quakes. Early in the book, Mr. Ulin, NOT a science writer, starts to veer into 4 or 3 star review territory when he spends a lot of time interviewing earthquake predictors and shows less skepticism than I usually like to read about, but I hung in with the book and found Ulin's conclusions satisfactory for a layperson. Ulin eventually discusses his meetings with many of the scientists currently involved with earthquake prediction [including telegenic Lucy Jones and hirsute Allan Lindh] and visits Parkfield, California, earthquake capitol of the world, BEFORE it finally had its long-awaited 6.0 earthquake [September 28, 2004 - after the publication of the book]. Ultimately, Ulin's son Noah seems to have the best answer for dealing with earthquakes [I won't spoil the end of the book by telling you how Noah deals with a quake, but I will say it's very close to how I deal with quakes]. Despite my early misgivings about the book, ultimately all the material hung together as an interesting and informative narrative and I do recommend the book.

Rating:
Summary: Living on the Edge of Disaster
Review: This book represents the best in crossover nonfiction, a blend of scientific fact and intuitive speculation. Ulin's style mixes academic science with geopoetic imagery, pulling evidence and anecdote about earthquake predictability from both historic fact and personal experience.

In certain moments when fact and personal intuition collide--or converge--the line is never straight, or predictable. "I started to think about the fault that ran beneath this pavement, wondering what would happen if it slipped...All of a sudden, I felt like I'd been given a set of signs, like a trapdoor had opened to expose the real California, the wild and elemental territory of our nightmares and our dreams. I looked around: life went on as normal. Club kids hung out in front of the Rainbow and the Roxy, while traffic moved past on Sunset at a crawl. In my head, though, it was as if reality itself had started to slip, as if somewhere out on the boulevard, I'd been put in touch with some kind of strange, intuitive logic, and it was telling me tonight's the night" (112).

While Californians do, in fact, inhabit shaky ground, the broader question Ulin asks is how any person, anywhere, makes sense out of his or her place in the universe.