Perils of a Restless Planet: Scientific Perspectives on Natural Disasters

by Ernest Zebrowski, Jr

Overview

From epidemics and earthquakes to tornados and tidal waves, the overwhelming power of nature never ceases to instill humankind with both terror and awe. As natural disasters continue to claim human lives and leave destruction in their wake, Perils of a Restless Planet examines our attempts to understand and anticipate such phenomena. Now available in paperback, this highly acclaimed book draws on actual events from ancient to present times. Coverage focuses on basic scientific inquiry, technological innovation and, ultimately, public policy to provide a lucid and riveting look at the natural events that have shaped our view of natural disasters. While shedding light on the elusive quality of nature's intermittent tantrums and the limits scientific study and laboratory replication impose on our understanding of its mercurial ways, the author extrapolates from the history of science to suggest how we may someday learn to warn and protect the vulnerable populations on our small, tempestuous planet. Compelling and informative, this book will find readers both in and outside of the scientific community.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521654883
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	05/13/1999
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	324
Product dimensions:	6.06(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.83(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; 1. Life on the Earth's crust; 2. The evolution of science; 3. Hazards of shelter; 4. Death and life; 5. Restless seas; 6. Earth in upheaval; 7. Volcanoes and asteroid impacts; 8. Deadly winds; 9. Science and irreproducible phenomena; Appendices; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"...can be recommended without reservation not just to earth scientists and engineers, but to all who might appreciate an imaginative, disaster-rooted focus on the development on human culture and the scientific perspective." James R. Rice, Pure Applied Geophysics

"Zebrowski revisits some of the greatest horrors engendered by Mother Nature over the last thousand years and explains how they can be predicted and how they work." Science News

"...makes for not only the gripping reading experience of a first-class mystery novel, but also provides a compelling account of the status of the species Homo Sapiens on the threshold of a new and very uncertain millennium." J.D. Ives, Choice

"It is an unexpected pleasure to get more than you pay for. Ernest Zebrowski, Jr.'s splendid book Perils of a Restless Planet provides just such a rare delight. The volume includes volcanoes, plagues, earthquakes, asteroids, tsunamis, tornadoes, and more...He seems to be that rarity, a careful and precise scientist who can tell a good story." Robert N. Leamnson, Science Books and Films

From the Publisher

A wide-ranging, gratifyingly lively investigation into the more violent ravings of Mother Nature from Zebrowski (College of Technology/Penn. State Univ.).

All of the great natural catastrophes are visited here—earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, epidemics, hurricanes, tornadoes, and firestorms—from Thera to Kobe, with stops at Lisbon, Messina, Galveston, San Francisco, Alaska, and other notable venues. Yet this isn't just a litany of the most godawful cataclysms, for Zebrowski is interested in the whys and wherefores behind such events, curious to make sense of their seeming randomness, anxious to gain a step toward predictability. To this end he plumbs atmospheric dynamics, wave physics, plate tectonics, plague vectors; explores the history of science (highlighting the work of Pythagoras, Galileo, and Newton); and argues for the support of arcane scientific projects, as he is a believer in the crucial need for all kinds of research, as well as in the creative leap of faith and inductive reasoning. Interesting as all this is—pleasingly accessible via Zebrowski's unhurried, skeptical, clear style—it is nature's fury that makes this book vibrate: a phosphorescent tsunami that lifts the man-of-war USS Wateree and delivers it into the Atacama Desert, two miles from its anchorage off the coast of southern Peru; the strange and silent lakes of Cameroon that on two occasions in the 1980s displaced the atmospheric oxygen and suffocated all those nearby; the witnessing by five British monks in 1178 of the results of a huge asteroid colliding with the moon. Zebrowski's infectious relish makes it hard not to look forward to the next plague—of, say, black widows—as he might tell it.

Mother Nature raves on, unpredicatbly and unsparingly. Zebrowski loves her still, though, like any vexed and fascinated scientist, he sure would like to know what sends her off her rocker.

Kirkus Reviews