“What are the best books about or featuring Earthquakes?” We looked at 171 of the top Earthquake books, aggregating and ranking them so we could answer that very question!
The top 13 titles, all appearing on 2 or more “Best Earthquake” book lists, are ranked below by how many lists they appear on. The remaining 150+ titles, as well as the lists we used are in alphabetical order at the bottom of the page.
For more destructive earth books take a look at our Best Volcano Book List!
Happy Scrolling!
A massive earthquake in America’s heartland causes massive destruction and a launches an equally epic struggle to save the survivors
Unleashed by ancient geologic forces, a magnitude 8.25 earthquake rocked San Francisco in the early hours of April 18, 1906. Less than a minute later, the city lay in ruins. Bestselling author Simon Winchester brings his inimitable storytelling abilities to this extraordinary event, exploring the legendary earthquake and fires that spread horror across San Francisco and northern California in 1906 as well as its startling impact on American history and, just as important, what science has recently revealed about the fascinating subterranean processes that produced it—and almost certainly will cause it to strike again.
An electronics salesman who has been deserted by his wife agrees to deliver an enigmatic package— and is rewarded with a glimpse of his true nature. A man who views himself as the son of God pursues a stranger who may be his human father. A mild-mannered collection agent receives a visit from a giant talking frog who enlists his help in saving Tokyo from destruction. The six stories in this collection come from the deep and mysterious place where the human meets the inhuman—and are further proof that Murakami is one of the most visionary writers at work today.
“It’s April 18, 1906, and a powerful earthquake has just rocked San Francisco. Photographer Edith Irvine and her assistant, Daisy Valentine, survive the tragedy. Armed with Edith’s camera, the two women set out to document the devastation–even as buildings crumble around them and soldiers promise to shoot anyone trying to photograph the crippled city.
Based on the real-life experience of photographer Edith Irvine, this harrowing tale of bravery and survival includes many of Irvine’s now-famous photographs.”
Earthquake engineering is the ultimate challenge for structural engineers. Even if natural phenomena involve great uncertainties, structural engineers need to design buildings, bridges, and dams capable of resisting the destructive forces produced by them. These disasters have created a new awareness about the disaster preparedness and mitigation. Before a building, utility system, or transportation structure is built, engineers spend a great deal of time analyzing those structures to make sure they will perform reliably under seismic and other loads. The purpose of this book is to provide structural engineers with tools and information to improve current building and bridge design and construction practices and enhance their sustainability during and after seismic events. In this book, Khan explains the latest theory, design applications and Code Provisions. Earthquake-Resistant Structures features seismic design and retrofitting techniques for low and high raise buildings, single and multi-span bridges, dams and nuclear facilities. The author also compares and contrasts various seismic resistant techniques in USA, Russia, Japan, Turkey, India, China, New Zealand, and Pakistan.
This is a concise overview of the history of earthquakes and seismology, including topics such as geologic faults, intensity patterns, plate tectonics, side effects of earthquakes (such as tsunamis), and protection of people and property. The book contains descriptions of the 1995 Sakhalin and 1997 Assisi earthquakes, and others such as Northridge, California (1994), Kobe, Japan (1995), Chi Chi, Taiwan (1999) and Denali, Alaska (2003). The sequence of chapters has been re-organized for the fifth edition to better facilitate learning the broad concepts before the detail. New exercises and web references have also been added to give students the opportunity to think and use data the way field seismologists do.
“An earthquake can strike without warning and wreak horrific destruction and death, whether it’s the cataclysmic 2008 Sichuan quake in China that killed tens of thousands or a future great earthquake on the San Andreas Fault in California, which scientists know is inevitable. Yet despite rapid advances in earthquake science, seismologists still can’t predict when the Big One will hit. Predicting the Unpredictable is the first book to explain why, exploring the fact and fiction behind the science–and pseudoscience–of earthquake prediction.
Susan Hough traces the continuing quest by seismologists to forecast the time, location, and magnitude of future quakes–a quest fraught with controversies, spectacular failures, and occasional apparent successes. She brings readers into the laboratory and out into the field with the pioneers who have sought to develop reliable methods based on observable phenomena such as small earthquake patterns and electromagnetic signals. Hough describes attempts that have raised hopes only to collapse under scrutiny, as well as approaches that seem to hold future promise. She recounts stories of strange occurrences preceding massive quakes, such as changes in well water levels and mysterious ground fogs. She also ventures to the fringes of pseudoscience to consider ideas outside the scientific mainstream, from the enduring belief that animals can sense impending earthquakes to amateur YouTube videos purporting to show earthquake lights prior to large quakes.”
“Earthquakes. You need to worry about them only if you’re in San Francisco, right? Wrong. We have been making enormous changes to subterranean America, and Mother Earth, as always, has been making some of her own. . . . The consequences for our real estate, our civil engineering, and our communities will be huge because they will include earthquakes most of us do not expect and cannot imagine—at least not without reading Quakeland. Kathryn Miles descends into mines in the Northwest, dissects Mississippi levee engineering studies, uncovers the horrific risks of an earthquake in the Northeast, and interviews the seismologists, structual engineers, and emergency managers around the country who are addressing this ground shaking threat.
As Miles relates, the era of human-induced earthquakes began in 1962 in Colorado after millions of gallons of chemical-weapon waste was pumped underground in the Rockies. More than 1,500 quakes over the following seven years resulted. The Department of Energy plans to dump spent nuclear rods in the same way. Evidence of fracking’s seismological impact continues to mount. . . . Humans as well as fault lines built our “quakeland”.”
Thirty years after the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake killed his family, Lewis Crane has become the world’s top seismologist, determined to protect people from his parent’s fate. But in a world controlled by Chinese corporations and split by racist and religious strife, many don’t want him to succeed.
The critically acclaimed second novel from the author of `The Corrections’. `Strong Motion’ is the brilliant, bold second novel from the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of `The Corrections’ and `Freedom’. Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of strange happenings – earthquakes strike the city, and the first one kills his grandmother. During a bitter feud over the inheritance Louis falls in love with Renee Seitchek, a passionate and brilliant seismologist, whose discoveries about the origin of the earthquakes complicate everything. Potent and vivid, `Strong Motion’ is a complex story of change from the forceful imagination of Jonathan Franzen.
“At 5:36 p.m. on March 27, 1964, a magnitude 9.2. earthquake – the second most powerful in world history – struck the young state of Alaska. The violent shaking, followed by massive tsunamis, devastated the southern half of the state and killed more than 130 people. A day later, George Plafker, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, arrived to investigate. His fascinating scientific detective work in the months that followed helped confirm the then-controversial theory of plate tectonics.
In a compelling tale about the almost unimaginable brute force of nature, New York Times science journalist Henry Fountain combines history and science to bring the quake and its aftermath to life in vivid detail. With deep, on-the-ground reporting from Alaska, often in the company of George Plafker, Fountain shows how the earthquake left its mark on the land and its people — and on science.”
“And then the earth shrugs–8.9 on the Richter scale in the world’s biggest earthquake since 1755. It hits New Madrid, Missouri, a sleepy town on the Mississippi. Seismologists had predicted the disaster . . . but no one listened. Within minutes, there is nothing but chaos and ruin as America’s heartland falls into the nightmare known as the Rift–a fault line in the earth that wrenchingly exposes the fractures in American society itself. As a strange white mist smelling of sulfur rises from the crevassed ground, the real terror begins for the survivors, including a teenager separated from his mother, an African-American engineer searching for his daughter, a TV preacher whose visions of hell have become all too real, and a sheriff cum Ku Klux Klansman who seeks racial vengeance in the midst of disaster.
It can happen. And sooner or later, it will.”
“An adventure that will shake you up! That’s what Jack and Annie get when the Magic Tree House whisks them back to California in 1906. As soon as they arrive, the famous San Francisco earthquake hits the city. Can Jack and Annie save the day? Or will San Francisco be destroyed first?
Did you know that there’s a Magic Tree House book for every kid?”
# | Book | Author | Lists |
(Titles Appear On 1 List each) | |||
14 | 1906 | James Dalessandro | Goodreads 1 |
15 | 1984 | George Orwell | Goodreads 2 |
16 | 1001 Questions Answered About Earthquakes, Avalanches, Floods and Other Natural Disasters | Barbara Tufty | USGS |
17 | 15: Fifteen Seconds: The Great California Earthquake of 1989 | Tides Foundation | USGS |
18 | 2:46: Aftershocks: Stories from the Japan Earthquake | Various | USGS |
19 | A History of Silence: a memoir | Lloyd Jones | Goodreads 2 |
20 | A Wrinkle in the Skin | John Christopher | Goodreads 1 |
21 | After Disasters | Viet Dinh | Goodreads 2 |
22 | After the Earth Quakes: Elastic Rebound on an Urban Planet | Susan E. Hough, Roger Bilham | USGS |
23 | Aftershock (Aftershock, #1) | Jill Sorenson | Goodreads 1 |
24 | Alaska Earthquake: Where Were You? compiled | Joy Griffin | USGS |
25 | All Fall Down (Supervolcano, #2) | Harry Turtledove | Goodreads 1 |
26 | Annals of the Former World | John McPhee | LA Times |
27 | Applied Geography: Principles and Practice: an Introduction to Useful Research in Physical, Environmental and Human Geography | Michael Pacione | Questia |
28 | Ask the Dust | John Fante | LA Times |
29 | Assembling California | John McPhee | USGS |
30 | Basic Earthquake Engineering | Halûk Sucuoğlu and Sinan Akkar | San Foundry |
31 | Basin and Range | John McPhee | USGS |
32 | Because We Are | Ted Oswald | Goodreads 2 |
33 | Blood Mines | Lynelle Clark | Goodreads 2 |
34 | Blood Red Road | Moira Young | Goodreads 2 |
35 | Cascadia’s Fault: The Coming Earthquake and Tsunami That Could Devastate North America | Jerry Thompson | Goodreads 2 |
36 | Catching Fire | Suzanne Collins | Goodreads 2 |
37 | Choosing Light: When an Earthquake Buried Me and My Family for 5 Days, I Learned to Fully Live | Viral Dalal | Goodreads 2 |
38 | City of Heroes: The Great Charleston Earthquake of 1886 | Richard N. Côté | USGS |
39 | Community Reconstruction after an Earthquake: Dialectical Sociology in Action | Ino Rossi | Questia |
40 | Control of Nature | John McPhee | USGS |
41 | Design for Earthquakes | James Ambrose, Dimitry Vergun | Alibris |
42 | Design of Earthquake Resistant Structures: Basic Theory of Seismic Stability | S V Polyakov | San Foundry |
43 | Design of Modern Highrise… | Hiroyuki Aoyama (Editor) | Alibris |
44 | Earth-quake Resistant Design of Structures | S K Duggal | San Foundry |
45 | Earthquake | Milly Lee and illustrated by Yangsook Choi | The Miss Rumphius Effect |
46 | Earthquake Architecture: New… | Belen Garcia (Editor),William Bain (Translator) | Alibris |
47 | Earthquake Design Practice… | Edmund Dwight Booth | Alibris |
48 | Earthquake Engineering:… | Nazzal Armouti | Alibris |
49 | Earthquake Fears, Predictions, and Preparations in Mid-America | John E. Farley | Questia |
50 | Earthquake Resistant Design of Structures | Aggarwal P | San Foundry |
51 | Earthquake Resistant Design of Structures | Shashikant K Duggal | San Foundry |
52 | Earthquake Resistant Design… | Dr. David J Dowrick | Alibris |
53 | Earthquake- Resistant Structures: Design, Assessment and Rehabilitation | Moustafa | San Foundry |
54 | Earthquake-Resistant Design of Building Structures | Dr Vinod Hosur | San Foundry |
55 | Earthquake-Resistant Design with Rubber | James M Kelly | San Foundry |
56 | Earthquake-Resistant Structures: Design and Analytical Aspects | Bruno Crump | San Foundry |
57 | Earthquakes | Franklyn Branley and illustrated by Megan Lloyd | The Miss Rumphius Effect |
58 | Earthquakes | Michael Woods and Mary Woods | The Miss Rumphius Effect |
59 | Earthquakes | Seymour Simon | The Miss Rumphius Effect |
60 | Earthquakes and Earth Structure | John H. Hodgson | USGS |
61 | Earthquakes and Geological Discovery | Bruce A. Bolt | USGS |
62 | Earthquakes and Volcanoes | Robert Muir Wood | USGS |
63 | Earthquakes and Volcanoes: Readings from Scientific American, introductions | Bruce A. Bolt | USGS |
64 | Earthquakes: Earth’s Mightiest Moments | David Harrison and illustrated by Cheryl Nathan | The Miss Rumphius Effect |
65 | Earthquakes: Science & Society | David S. Brumbaugh | USGS |
66 | Earthshake: Poems From the Ground Up | Lisa Westberg Peters and illustrated by Cathie Felstead | The Miss Rumphius Effect |
67 | Eruption (Supervolcano, #1) | Harry Turtledove | Goodreads 1 |
68 | Escaping The Giant Wave | Peg Kehret | Goodreads 2 |
69 | Fahrenheit 451 | Ray Bradbury | Goodreads 2 |
70 | Field Guide to the San Andreas Fault | David K. Lynch | USGS |
71 | Finding Fault in California | Susan Elizabeth Hough | USGS |
72 | Fire and Fog (Fremont Jones, #2) | Dianne Day | Goodreads 1 |
73 | Five Fires: Race, Catastrophe, and the Shaping of California | David Wyatt | LA Times |
74 | Full-Rip 9.0: The Next Big Earthquake in the Pacific Northwest | Sandi Doughton | Goodreads 2 |
75 | Fundamentals of Earthquake… | Ellis L Krinitzsky, James P Gould | Alibris |
76 | Furnace of Creation, Cradle of Destruction: A Journey to the Birthplace of Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Tsunamis | Roy Chester | Questia |
77 | Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone | Richard Lloyd Parry | Goodreads 2 |
78 | Gone with the Wind | Margaret Mitchell | Goodreads 2 |
79 | H is for Hawk | Helen Macdonald | Goodreads 2 |
80 | How I Live Now | Meg Rosoff | Goodreads 2 |
81 | How Mountains Are Made | Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld and illustrated by James Graham Hale | The Miss Rumphius Effect |
82 | If You Lived at the Time of the Great San Francisco Earthquake | Ellen Devine and illustrated by Pat Grant Porter | The Miss Rumphius Effect |
83 | Illusions of Safety: Culture and Earthquake Hazard Response in California and Japan | Risa Palm; John Carroll | Questia |
84 | In Darkness | Nick Lake | Goodreads 1 |
85 | In Suspect Terrain | John McPhee | USGS |
86 | International Handbook of… | Mario Paz | Alibris |
87 | Jane Eyre | Charlotte Brontë | Goodreads 2 |
88 | Janice VanCleave’s Earthquakes: Mind-boggling Experiments You Can Turn Into Science Fair Projects | Janice VanCleave and illustrated by Ray Burns | The Miss Rumphius Effect |
89 | Jump Into Science: Earthquakes | Ellen Prager and illustrated by Susan Greenstein | The Miss Rumphius Effect |
90 | Just Listen | Sarah Dessen | Goodreads 2 |
91 | Magnitude 8: Earthquakes and Life Along the San Andreas Fault | Philip Fradkin | USGS |
92 | Making Buildings Safer for… | A S Nowak, T V Galambos | Alibris |
93 | Megaquake: How Japan and the World Should Respond | Tetsuo Takashima; Robert D. Eldridge; Robert D. Eldridge | Questia |
94 | Monster in a Box | Spalding Gray | LA Times |
95 | Monsters of Men | Patrick Ness | Goodreads 2 |
96 | Music of the Earth: Volcanoes, Earthquakes, and Other Geological Wonders | Ron L. Morton | Questia |
97 | Nature of the Stratigraphical Record | Derek V. | USGS |
98 | Night of the Howling Dogs | Graham Salisbury | Goodreads 2 |
99 | One Amazing Thing | Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni | Goodreads 2 |
100 | PaperQuake: A Puzzle | Kathryn Reiss | Goodreads 1 |
101 | Powers of Nature | National Geographic, Special Publications Division | USGS |
102 | Quake | Lou Cadle | Goodreads 1 |
103 | Quake | Rudolph Wurlitzer | LA Times |
104 | Quake! | Joe Cottonwood | Goodreads 1 |
105 | Rising from the Plains | John McPhee | USGS |
106 | Roadside Geology author varies | book | USGS |
107 | San Francisco is Burning: The Untold Story of the 1906 Earthquake and Fires | Dennis Smith | USGS |
108 | Saving Cascadia | John J. Nance | Goodreads 1 |
109 | Seismic and Wind Forces:… | Alan Williams | Alibris |
110 | Seismic Design of Buildings… | Alan Williams | Alibris |
111 | Seismic Design of Reinforced… | Jack Moehle | Alibris |
112 | Seismic Design of Reinforced… | Robert E Englekirk | Alibris |
113 | Seismic design of reinforced… | Thomas Paulay, M J N Priestley | Alibris |
114 | Seismic Design of Steel… | Victor Gioncu, Federico Mazzolani | Alibris |
115 | Seismic Design Solved Problems | Majid Baradar, Pe | Alibris |
116 | Seismic Isolation for… | Andrew Charleson, Adriana Guisasola | Alibris |
117 | Serafina’s Promise | Ann E. Burg | Goodreads 2 |
118 | Shaken | Eric Walters | Goodreads 1 |
119 | Shaken to the Core | Jae | Goodreads 1 |
120 | Sicily in Shadow and in Sun: The Earthquake and the American Relief Work | Maud Howe; John Elliott | Questia |
121 | Simplified Building Design… | James E Ambrose | Alibris |
122 | Sisterland | Curtis Sittenfeld | Goodreads 2 |
123 | Slide | Gerald A. Browne | Goodreads 1 |
124 | Slow Apocalypse | John Varley | Goodreads 1 |
125 | Smart Structures: Innovative… | Franklin Y Cheng, Hongping Jiang | Alibris |
126 | Stolen: A Letter to My Captor | Lucy Christopher | Goodreads 2 |
127 | Tall Story | Candy Gourlay | Goodreads 2 |
128 | The Ask and the Answer | Patrick Ness | Goodreads 2 |
129 | The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us | Lucy Jones | Goodreads 2 |
130 | The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea | Johanna Craven | Goodreads 1 |
131 | The Earth Dragon Awakes: The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 | Laurence Yep | The Miss Rumphius Effect |
132 | The Earth in turmoil; earthquakes, volcanoes, and their impact on humankind | Kerry Sieh | USGS |
133 | The Earth Machine: The Science of a Dynamic Planet | Edmond A. Mathez; James D. Webster | Questia |
134 | The Earth-Shaking Facts About Earthquakes with Max Axiom | Katherine Krohn and illustrated by Tod Smith and Al Milgrom | The Miss Rumphius Effect |
135 | The Earthquake in Chile | Heinrich von Kleist | LA Times |
136 | The Earthquake Machine | Mary Pauline Lowry | Goodreads 1 |
137 | The Fifth Season | N.K. Jemisin | Goodreads 2 |
138 | The Flutter of an Eyelid | Myron Brinig | LA Times |
139 | The Folklore of Earthquakes | Carey McWilliams | LA Times |
140 | The Geology of Earthquakes | Robert S Yeats, Kerry Sieh, Clarence R. Allen | USGS |
141 | The Hammer of Eden | Ken Follett | Goodreads 2 |
142 | The Hunger Games | Suzanne Collins | Goodreads 2 |
143 | The Knife of Never Letting Go | Patrick Ness | Goodreads 2 |
144 | The Last Day: Wrath, Ruin, and Reason in the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 | Nicholas Shrady | USGS |
145 | The Lisbon Earthquake | T. D. Kendrick | Questia |
146 | The Million Death Quake: The Science of Predicting Earth’s Deadliest Natural Disaster | Roger Musson | Goodreads 2 |
147 | The Northridge Earthquake: Vulnerability and Disaster | Robert Bolin; Lois Stanford | Questia |
148 | The Obelisk Gate | N.K. Jemisin | Goodreads 2 |
149 | The Orphan Tsunami of 1700 | Brian F. Atwater | USGS |
150 | The Queen of Subtleties: A Novel of Anne Boleyn | Suzannah Dunn | Goodreads 2 |
151 | The Renegades (Michael Parson & Sophia Gold, #3) | Tom Young | Goodreads 1 |
152 | The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 | Marc Tyler Nobleman | The Miss Rumphius Effect |
153 | The San Francisco Earthquake, 1906 | Lauren Tarshis | Goodreads 2 |
154 | The Seismic Design Handbook | Farzad Naeim (Editor) | Alibris |
155 | The Walk | Lee Goldberg | Goodreads 1 |
156 | Things That Happened Before the Earthquake | Chiara Barzini | Goodreads 2 |
157 | This Dynamic Earth: The Story of Plate Tectonics | Jacquelyne Kious, Robert I. Tilling | USGS |
158 | Time for Kids: Earthquakes! | the Editors of Time for Kids | The Miss Rumphius Effect |
159 | Time of Fog and Fire (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #16) | Rhys Bowen | Goodreads 1 |
160 | Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time (Jerusalem-Harvard Lectures) | Stephen J. Gould | USGS |
161 | Tsunami | Tetsuo Takashima | Goodreads 1 |
162 | Volcanic and Tectonic Hazard… | Charles B Connor (Editor),Neil A Chapman (Editor) | Alibris |
163 | Volcanoes and Earthquakes | Susanna van Rose | Goodreads 2 |
164 | When the Earth Moves: Rogue Earthquakes, Tremors, and Aftershocks | Patricia Barnes-Svarney | USGS |
165 | When the Mississippi Ran Backwards: Empire, Intrigue, Murder, and the New Madrid Earthquakes | Jay Feldman | Goodreads 2 |
166 | Why the Earth Quakes: The Story of Earthquakes & Volcanoes | Matthys Levy, Mario Salvadori | USGS |
167 | Wind and Earthquake Resistant… | Bungale S Taranath | Alibris |
168 | Without Warning (Shaken, #1) | K.G. MacGregor | Goodreads 1 |
169 | Witness to Disaster: Earthquakes | Judy Fradin | The Miss Rumphius Effect |
170 | Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History | Stephen J. Gould | USGS |
171 | Дом с мезонином | Anton Chekhov | Goodreads 2 |
Source | Article |
Alibris | Best Selling Earthquake resistant design Books |
Goodreads 1 | Best earthquake fiction |
Goodreads 2 | Popular Earthquakes Books |
LA Times | 9 earthquake books revisited |
Questia | Earthquakes |
San Foundry | Best Reference Books – Design of Earthquake Resistant Structures |
Science Mag | A pair of books explores American earthquakes, past and future |
The Miss Rumphius Effect | Thematic Book List – Earthquakes |
USGS | Recommended Reading for the Changing Earth |
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