Furious Earth: The Science and Nature of Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Tsunamis

by Ellen Prager

If our planet is a sleeping giant, it slumbers fitfully. Earth's fabric is shifting, creaking, and groaning. Our familiar landscape bears the scars of hidden forces at work deep beneath it. This book... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0071351612
• ISBN13: 9780071351614
• Release Date: November 1999
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
• Length: 235 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Good general or introductory book

Very well organized and presented. Covers the basics very well with easy to understand terminology. It lacks extensive detail regarding the topics covered....but I think that's the point.

A Choice Of Disasters

Furious Earth by Ellen J. Prager [with help from Stanley Williams (Surviving Galeras), Kate Hutton (one of SoCals TV seismologists and the author of the earthquake updates on the TriNet earthquake website), and Costas Synolakis] is a well-written introduction to earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis. This book appears to be aimed at junior high/high school aged readers, but adult readers who have no background in these subjects will also enjoy the book. An earlier reviewer suggested that the book has the coverage of the better chapters of an earth science textbook, but I wish high school earth science texts were this well-written. I enjoyed reading the book despite the depth of my background and appreciate the refresher course that Furious Earth gave me. My only complaint concerns the ordering of the color plates at the center of the volume. The pictures are out of order to their mention in the text and the only thing that comes to mind is that they were ordered the way they were to make them fit on a limited number of plate pages. Furious Earth belongs on the shelves in as many elementary and secondary school libraries as possible and would be a wonderful gift for a budding earth scientist.

Furious Earth-

I am a sixth grade teacher and was given this book at a science conference. After just beginning to read it, I immediatly went online to see how much the book cost- I want to order one for each for my students! It will be a bit hard and I will have to do some serious directing, but the book is an excellent example of a clear, scientific, organized, up-to-date, and interesting (yes- interesting enough for 30 sixth graders) nonfiction book in the field of earth science. Furious Earth combines "PBS-like" research discussions and theory- (Plate Techtonics Discovered, Paleotsunamis...) with "RealTV-like" examples (Italy, 79 A.D.: Vesuvuis; The World's Largest and Smallest Quakes). The book is a surprisingly suspenseful, fascinating, and easy read (for us unscientific folk). The 16 color pages of graphs and pictures also add to the subject. I can't wait to see their eyes grow when I read to them Chapter 2- Earthquakes. It starts off with the 1994 Northridge, CA quake... It hooked me at least...