Jim Bakker, building a Christian community in Missouri, "NASA's pick for safest place to live"

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

12. Have you ever read "On Shaky Ground" by John Nance?

The best book ever about earthquakes. It has several chapters on the New Madrid Quakes. OMG!

Did I mention it's the best book ever about earthquakes?

This is one of the several topics I'm obsessed about. The first time I read it was on the exact 25th anniversary of the Great Alaskan Quake of 1964, which I remember quite well. The first four or five chapters are about that quake.

I'd bought a paperback edition of the book, and it was crumbling and falling apart, so I decided to re-purchase it it hardback. I'd ordered it on Amazon and the day it was supposed to arrive I awoke to NPR reporting a massive quake in Japan. Huh? Wasn't there such a quake yesterday? Yes, there was, but this was a new quake, the one that took out Fukushima. That morning, after listening to NPR, I got up and collected my local newspaper. It was the morning of March 11, 2011, and on my front door was the new copy of "On Shaky Ground" that I'd ordered a few days earlier. Wonderful, if somewhat creepy coincidence.

And creepy coincidences aside, On Shaky Ground is simply the very best earthquake book ever. Its earthquake science is perfect. It's only slightly outdated because of various earthquake events since its publication, but its precise science is unchanged.