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Author: Conevery Bolton Valencius Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 022605392X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 471
Book Description
From December 1811 to February 1812, massive earthquakes shook the middle Mississippi Valley, collapsing homes, snapping large trees midtrunk, and briefly but dramatically reversing the flow of the continent’s mightiest river. For decades, people puzzled over the causes of the quakes, but by the time the nation began to recover from the Civil War, the New Madrid earthquakes had been essentially forgotten. In The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes, Conevery Bolton Valencius remembers this major environmental disaster, demonstrating how events that have been long forgotten, even denied and ridiculed as tall tales, were in fact enormously important at the time of their occurrence, and continue to affect us today. Valencius weaves together scientific and historical evidence to demonstrate the vast role the New Madrid earthquakes played in the United States in the early nineteenth century, shaping the settlement patterns of early western Cherokees and other Indians, heightening the credibility of Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa for their Indian League in the War of 1812, giving force to frontier religious revival, and spreading scientific inquiry. Moving into the present, Valencius explores the intertwined reasons—environmental, scientific, social, and economic—why something as consequential as major earthquakes can be lost from public knowledge, offering a cautionary tale in a world struggling to respond to global climate change amid widespread willful denial. Engagingly written and ambitiously researched—both in the scientific literature and the writings of the time—The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes will be an important resource in environmental history, geology, and seismology, as well as history of science and medicine and early American and Native American history.
Author: Conevery Bolton Valencius Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 022605392X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 471
Book Description
From December 1811 to February 1812, massive earthquakes shook the middle Mississippi Valley, collapsing homes, snapping large trees midtrunk, and briefly but dramatically reversing the flow of the continent’s mightiest river. For decades, people puzzled over the causes of the quakes, but by the time the nation began to recover from the Civil War, the New Madrid earthquakes had been essentially forgotten. In The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes, Conevery Bolton Valencius remembers this major environmental disaster, demonstrating how events that have been long forgotten, even denied and ridiculed as tall tales, were in fact enormously important at the time of their occurrence, and continue to affect us today. Valencius weaves together scientific and historical evidence to demonstrate the vast role the New Madrid earthquakes played in the United States in the early nineteenth century, shaping the settlement patterns of early western Cherokees and other Indians, heightening the credibility of Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa for their Indian League in the War of 1812, giving force to frontier religious revival, and spreading scientific inquiry. Moving into the present, Valencius explores the intertwined reasons—environmental, scientific, social, and economic—why something as consequential as major earthquakes can be lost from public knowledge, offering a cautionary tale in a world struggling to respond to global climate change amid widespread willful denial. Engagingly written and ambitiously researched—both in the scientific literature and the writings of the time—The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes will be an important resource in environmental history, geology, and seismology, as well as history of science and medicine and early American and Native American history.
Author: Conevery Bolton Valencius Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 9780226273754 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
From December 1811 to February 1812, massive earthquakes shook the middle Mississippi Valley, collapsing homes, snapping large trees midtrunk, and briefly but dramatically reversing the flow of the continent’s mightiest river. For decades, people puzzled over the causes of the quakes, but by the time the nation began to recover from the Civil War, the New Madrid earthquakes had been essentially forgotten. In The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes, Conevery Bolton Valencius remembers this major environmental disaster, demonstrating how events that have been long forgotten, even denied and ridiculed as tall tales, were in fact enormously important at the time of their occurrence, and continue to affect us today. Valencius weaves together scientific and historical evidence to demonstrate the vast role the New Madrid earthquakes played in the United States in the early nineteenth century, shaping the settlement patterns of early western Cherokees and other Indians, heightening the credibility of Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa for their Indian League in the War of 1812, giving force to frontier religious revival, and spreading scientific inquiry. Moving into the present, Valencius explores the intertwined reasons—environmental, scientific, social, and economic—why something as consequential as major earthquakes can be lost from public knowledge, offering a cautionary tale in a world struggling to respond to global climate change amid widespread willful denial. Engagingly written and ambitiously researched—both in the scientific literature and the writings of the time—The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes will be an important resource in environmental history, geology, and seismology, as well as history of science and medicine and early American and Native American history.
Author: Jay Feldman Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1416583106 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 330
Book Description
From Jay Feldmen comes an enlightening work about how the most powerful earthquakes in the history of America united the Indians in one last desperate rebellion, reversed the Mississippi River, revealed a seamy murder in the Jefferson family, and altered the course of the War of 1812. On December 15, 1811, two of Thomas Jefferson's nephews murdered a slave in cold blood and put his body parts into a roaring fire. The evidence would have been destroyed but for a rare act of God—or, as some believed, of the Indian chief Tecumseh. That same day, the Mississippi River's first steamboat, piloted by Nicholas Roosevelt, powered itself toward New Orleans on its maiden voyage. The sky grew hazy and red, and jolts of electricity flashed in the air. A prophecy by Tecumseh was about to be fulfilled. He had warned reluctant warrior-tribes that he would stamp his feet and bring down their houses. Sure enough, between December 16, 1811, and late April 1812, a catastrophic series of earthquakes shook the Mississippi River Valley. Of the more than 2,000 tremors that rumbled across the land during this time, three would have measured nearly or greater than 8.0 on the not-yet-devised Richter Scale. Centered in what is now the bootheel region of Missouri, the New Madrid earthquakes were felt as far away as Canada; New York; New Orleans; Washington, DC; and the western part of the Missouri River. A million and a half square miles were affected as the earth's surface remained in a state of constant motion for nearly four months. Towns were destroyed, an eighteen-mile-long by five-mile-wide lake was created, and even the Mississippi River temporarily ran backwards. The quakes uncovered Jefferson's nephews' cruelty and changed the course of the War of 1812 as well as the future of the new republic. In When the Mississippi Ran Backwards, Jay Feldman expertly weaves together the story of the slave murder, the steamboat, Tecumseh, and the war, and brings a forgotten period back to vivid life. Tecumseh's widely believed prophecy, seemingly fulfilled, hastened an unprecedented alliance among southern and northern tribes, who joined the British in a disastrous fight against the U.S. government. By the end of the war, the continental United States was secure against Britain, France, and Spain; the Indians had lost many lives and much land; and Jefferson's nephews were exposed as murderers. The steamboat, which survived the earthquake, was sunk. When the Mississippi Ran Backwards sheds light on this now-obscure yet pivotal period between the Revolutionary and Civil wars, uncovering the era's dramatic geophysical, political, and military upheavals. Feldman paints a vivid picture of how these powerful earthquakes made an impact on every aspect of frontier life—and why similar catastrophic quakes are guaranteed to recur. When the Mississippi Ran Backwards is popular history at its best.
Author: Jonathan Todd Hancock Publisher: UNC Press Books ISBN: 1469662191 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 205
Book Description
The New Madrid earthquakes of 1811–12 were the strongest temblors in the North American interior in at least the past five centuries. From the Great Plains to the Atlantic Coast and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, a broad cast of thinkers struggled to explain these seemingly unprecedented natural phenomena. They summoned a range of traditions of inquiry into the natural world and drew connections among signs of environmental, spiritual, and political disorder on the cusp of the War of 1812. Drawn from extensive archival research, Convulsed States probes their interpretations to offer insights into revivalism, nation remaking, and the relationship between religious and political authority across Native nations and the United States in the early nineteenth century. With a compelling narrative and rigorous comparative analysis, Jonathan Todd Hancock uses the earthquakes to bridge historical fields and shed new light on this pivotal era of nation remaking. Through varied peoples' efforts to come to grips with the New Madrid earthquakes, Hancock reframes early nineteenth-century North America as a site where all of its inhabitants wrestled with fundamental human questions amid prophecies, political reinventions, and war.
Author: Norma Bagnall Publisher: University of Missouri Press ISBN: 0826210546 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 129
Book Description
Describes the severe earthquake which changed the course of the Mississippi River in several places, destroyed timberlands, drained swamps, and formed lakes.
Author: Philip L. Fradkin Publisher: Henry Holt and Company ISBN: 1466864311 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 452
Book Description
Magnitude 8 is the archetypal natural disaster defined. To understand the cataclysmic earthquake that will tear California apart one day, Philip L. Fradkin has written a dramatic history of earthquakes and an eloquent guide to the San Andreas Fault, the world's best-known tectonic landscape. The author includes vivid stories of earthquakes elsewhere: in New England, the central Mississippi River Valley, New York City, Europe, and the Far East. Always, he combines human and natural drama to place the reader at the epicenter of the most instantaneous and unpredictable of all the Earth's phenomena. Following the San Andreas Fault from Cape Mecino to Mexico--canoeing the fault line in northern California and walking underground through the Hollywood fault--noted environmental historian Philip L. Fradkin reclaims the human dimensions of earthquakes from the science-dominated accounts.
Author: Myron L. Fuller Publisher: Care Publications ISBN: 9780934426497 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 138
Book Description
This is an unabridged reprint of the first book and first thorough scientific work ever published on the great New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12. The winter of 1811-12 experienced the greatest burst of seismic energy in the history of the original 48 states. Geologist, Myron Fuller, spent several years in the field between 1900-1905 scouting the New Madrid fault zone on foot and on horseback, mapping the consequences of these giant cataclysms that had so permanently and so profoundly changed the landscape of this region 90 years before. Originally published by the U.S. Geological Survey, this book is the starting point for all serious researchers on these world-class temblors. Foreword to this 1995 printing is by seismologist, David Stewart, Ph.D.
Author: Deborah R. Coen Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226111814 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 358
Book Description
Earthquakes have taught us much about our planet's hidden structure and the forces that have shaped it. This book explains how observing networks transformed an instant of panic and confusion into a field for scientific research, turning earthquakes into natural experiments at the nexus of the physical and human sciences.
Author: Conevery Bolton Valencius
Author: Conevery Bolton Valencius
Author: Conevery Bolton Valencius
Author: Jay Feldman
Author: Jonathan Todd Hancock
Author: Norma Bagnall
Author: Myron L. Fuller
Author: James L. Penick
Author: Philip L. Fradkin
Author: Myron L. Fuller
Author: Deborah R. Coen