Crammed into the San Francisco Bay area and the Los Angeles Basin is a population greater than that of both Ontario and Quebec. Both these drought-prone regions of California need to import water over improbable distances. Reliance on imported water, however, is not their Achilles heel; it is the fact that each sits astride one of the most violently active seismic zones in the world.

A Dangerous Place is a compelling chronicle of a man-made eruption of development and progress over the last 150 years. It also explores the even bigger problem facing these two megalopolises -- their location in major earthquake zones -- and provides a clear and concise explanation of plate tectonics. Finally, it offers a chillingly realistic description of the impact of a future earthquake, in 2005, originating in the sixty-mile Hayward Fault running from San Francisco to San Jose.

This is a new release of the book published in February 2003.

Marc Reisner was staff writer of the Natural Resources Defense Council from 1972 to 1979. In 1979 he received an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship to investigate water resources in the West. In addition to Cadillac Desert, which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award, Reisner is also author of Game Wars: The Undercover Pursuit of Wildlife Poachers. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Lawrie Mott, and two young daughters.

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