Karen's Reviews > When the Mississippi Ran Backwards: Empire, Intrigue, Murder, and the New Madrid Earthquakes

I teach geology, and I've long wondered about the New Madrid faultline and the big earthquake that occurred there in the early 1800's. I know way more about the San Francisco 1906 earthquake because I was raised in the Bay Area, and I'm familiar with the San Andreas fault. That's actually why I became interested in geology. Everyone always worries about the West Coast having earthquakes, not realizing the middle of the country has an faultline just as dangerous to worry about...

This book is a mix of genres. It is a lot of history, some biography, and some geography in order to tell the whole story of not just the quake but the impact that the 1811/1812 quake and shocks had on a variety of characters in a historical context. The author brings alive how interconnected everything is...one domino falls and it impacts so many other things. In this case the quake altered the Mississippi River, caused a murder to be discovered, it led to some changes in where towns were placed along the river, and impacted the 1812 War between the British/Native Americans and the U.S.

The writing was excellent, with a lot of very good research that made the book very readable and brought a long forgotten time back to life. What I really appreciate is having a lot more knowledge about the New Madrid Fault (there were some good maps in the book) and about the future potential and probability for another quake to happen. The next one will be much more devastating as this area is a lot more populated...