DANGER FROM BELOW: Earthquakes: Past, Present, and Future

The destruction wrought by Alaska's Good Friday quake in 1964 and Japan's Great Quake in 1923; old beliefs about earthquakes and (with just a nod at plate tectonics) a dab of current theory; the seismograph and the Richter scale and the possibility of prediction; earthquake zones and safety measures: Simon covers the standard material in an easily readable manner, but without delving into why quakes occur or adding to what already exists at this level. Undemanding, but correspondingly less rewarding than Lauber's Earthquakes (1972).