A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 by Simon Winchester

_{Very clever, Mr Winchester. Under the guise of an entertaining book, you have taught us stuff.  A Crack in the Edge of the World is a course in Geology 101 that is informative and unforgettable in its gravity. Wrapped into these geology lessons are classes in world history and you have tied it all into a rolling travelogue of seismic hotspots on the American continent covering more than 8,000 miles. Page by page you have pulled your readers into the world of earthquakes and tectonic plate volatility, packaged around the tragedy of the San Francisco earthquake and its aftermath. Genius!}

The Ring of Fire on which San Francisco is located and, as Winchester gently points out, probably should not be, is aptly named and his tone is measured as he discusses molten centres, tsunamis and the cataclysmic effects of tectonic plates crashing and grinding. He is factual and clear, adopting just the right tone to assuage the alarm we might feel had his language been more inflammatory. Because, in all of this, he has not supplied us with an answer to the big question. ‘What is to be done?’

While admittedly his topic is spectacularly enormous, and the depth and breadth of his research staggeringin its scope, Winchester's use of staggering/staggeringly and spectacular/spectacularly to qualify descriptors is something his editor really should not have let slide. But he is forgiven. His ability to communicate and explain complex scientific concepts while holding the attention of his non-scientific readers makes him a master of the creative non-fiction genre, quite enough to convince me to overlook his occasional lapses into hyperbole. Winchester researches his books thoroughly and travels the world in this pursuit. Along the way, he becomes an expert in his field of the day, although, in the case of A Crack in the Edge of the World, it cannot hurt that his undergraduate degree was in geology. The book pivots around the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, and Winchester takes the time to place this singular event within a geological, historical, and human context and, in doing so, he enchants, informs, and horrifies in varying degrees. An example of enchanting: in 132 A.D. during the Han dynasty, a Chinese astronomer and mathematician, Chang Heng, invented the world’s first seismograph, the hou feng di dong yi, aka the earthquake weathercock. Winchester’s description made me want one. Brass and jade. Dragons and toads. I want to spend time with one, sitting outside my room on a balcony in, oddly, Venice, contemplating the jade frogs and the brass dragons and the da’Vinci’esq’ness of it all.

After finishing his research in San Francisco, Winchester sets out in a jeep on what has to be the longest detour in the world. He leaves San Francisco for the east coast via the Alaska Highway, adding 4,000 miles to his journey. He drives to Milepost 1,314, where he “turns left for Anchorage.” He is looking for the Alaska oil pipeline and he finds it wandering unprotected through the pristine wilderness, built “high off the ground to allow migrating caribou to pass beneath it.” 800 miles of Mitsubishi-made steel tube on Teflon-coated sliders. He thinks of explosives and how easy it would be! But what really interests Winchester is the care the builders have taken in their design which allows the pipeline to flex when needing to deal with seismic activity. Because it sits on the Denali Fault, which is an intrinsic part of that aforementioned Pacific Ring of Fire.

Another Winchester detour. Another 4,000 miles, this time to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming which, he writes, “is ready for an eruption almost any day.” There have been indications but all that is known is that “when it happens, itwill almost certainly be vast. It is that 'almost certainly' that gives us permission to continue to ignore the inevitability of what Winchester is saying. If we don't talk about it, it may not be true. It's not totally certain, after all, only almost. Lynn Truss (author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation) has a simple rule about qualifying absolutes. Don't! However, considering Winchester's superior command of English, I think he was being deliberate. This is 'benefit of the doubt' stuff. He is giving us permission to suspend our belief to that little bit of the story. I'm in and I'm sure Truss probably would be too.

STIFF: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

  STIFF (Norton, 2003) by Mary Roach is a minefield! Whether discussing grave robbing (entertaining), the brutality of crash tests cadavers (informative), puppy mutilations (horrifying), or human head transplants (macabre and horrifying), Roach shirks from nothing and conceals not a detail. Not - A - Detail! She does, however, remain cognizant that her readers occasionally need air, and she always intercedes at that pivotal moment as we dazedly stumble toward the minefield. Take a moment, my readers, she allows. Breath. We do, and she moves on.  

    About twenty-five years ago, after watching yet another documentary on battery chicken farms, I became a vegetarian, although I continue to eat and love seafood. Very unfortunately, but quite correctly, Roach compares deep frying live newborn mice (a Chinese delicacy) with tossing live lobsters into boiling water (a Nova Scotia delicacy). This audiobook paragraph was inexorable and, try as I might, I cannot unhear it. As I cross lobster off my diminishing list of protein sources, I curse you, Mary Roach!

     Roach’s book is instructive and gives us clarity about the modern lives of cadavers and the sometimes wonderful, sometimes horrifying history of how we got here. Donating one’s body to science is consenting to scientific research and everything that entails, she says, and that is something we usually don’t think about. Donating is different from being an organ donor. It is a complete abandonment of the body and it gives blanket permission for all that follows. Medical students learn and surgeons practice their skills. Crash testing real bodies do the job a synthesized body cannot. It is brutal but essential research in vehicular safety. A side benefit is that I have learned enough to become a grave robber using only tools from my hall closet. I suspect, however, that this market has already bottomed out.

          Roach delves deeply into the history of cadavers, travelling the world to gather research and to gain insight into cultural traditions and processes. My personal favourite is the ‘Mellified Man’ recipe which Roach includes under medicinal cannibalism in Chapter 10: Eat Me. The mellification process goes like this. An elderly person volunteers to eat and bathe in honey until dead, which apparently takes about a month. The body is placed in a stone coffin, covered in honey, and steeped for one hundred years, after which time a confection has formed. This confection is administered topically or orally for the treatment of broken and wounded limbs and other ailments. “A small amount taken internally will immediately cure the complaint.” Roach writes that Li Shih-chen, author of the Chinese Materia Medicat (1597) expressed doubts about the veracity of this story. He did, however, include the recipe in his book. STIFF is informative, entertaining, and historically fascinating, and occasionally deeply disturbing. However, Roach is never distasteful in the details, distressing though they sometimes are. She writes without emotion and without judgment, and her wry humour carries us from one difficult topic to another, acting as a parachute lest we spin into freefall.

         “Because dead people look very much like live people,” Roach says in an interview with Tyler Cowen at George Mason University, “there is a tendency to treat them as though they are still people.” But she reminds us that cadavers are not people and, “as cadavers, they have superpowers that give us answers we can’t get any other way.”(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjwgML2Sm9w&feature=emb_title). 

       Roach is driven by curiosity. Watching the interview with her is like seeing sparks dance above a campfire. She is witty, chatty, and immensely knowledgeable about her research. I read, listened, watched, and learned. Her ready smile, engaging chatter and merry laugh are quite at odds with her authorial topics. Defecation Induced Sudden Death? A real thing. It killed Elvis. At what point should roadkill not grace the dinner table? Undecided.

          There are few authors who would write, or could write, a book such as STIFF and it seems to me that Mary Roach has written the unwritable. STIFF is a splendid marriage of history, scientific evolution, horror, fact, and humour and it carefully informs those among us who wish to donate our bodies to science. Roach’s books are widely read and continue to make the New York Times bestseller list. STIFF The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is not, however, a book for the fainthearted.