Tells the story of various epic earthquakes. This book explains the geological processes responsible for earthquakes, and they describe how these events have had long-lasting aftereffects on human societies and cultures. It includes quotations from literature and from later reports. "The book is written with a vivid and easily digested narrative style that helps the amateur reader to assimilate a bit of basic geological knowledge. . . . [T]he geology-centered reader will better understand the far-reaching effects of earthquakes for different aspects of the history of civilization."---Marek Lewandowski, Pure and Applied Geophysics