Simon Winchester, who has brought the unlikely subject of geology to the literary forefront in his national bestsellers Krakatoa and The Map That Changed the World, now shines his literary light on the most dramatic natural calamity in US history in A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906. Using the devastating 7.9 quake that struck the bustling city of San Francisco as a narrative springboard, Winchester offers a panoramic blend of history and science that captures the 'savage interruption' and its destructive aftermath with gripping immediacy. Winchester explores the global geology that jolted the Earth awake on the fateful day and suggests why it certainly will happen again.Simon Winchester has worked as a foreign correspondent for most of his career. Hegraduated from Oxford in 1966 with a degree in geology and spent a year working as a geologist in the Ruwenzori Mountains in western Uganda as well as on oil rigs in the North Sea before joining his first newspaper in 1967. His journalism, mainly for The Guardian and The Sunday Times, has taken him to Belfast, Washington, DC, New Delhi, New York, London, and Hong Kong. His writings have won him several awards, including Britain's Journalist of the Year. Winchester writes and presents television films and is a frequent contributor to the BBC radio program From Our Own Correspondent.