Includes bibliographical references and index.

Natural disasters bedevil our planet, and each appears to be a unique event. The author, a geologist shows how all disasters are connected. Humans persist in building centers of civilization in places of past disasters. We believe that our technology will protect us next time. Yet we rarely win these battles with the Earth because we do not understand natural disasters deeply enough. The author has two goals for her book. The first is to show how the dynamics, the workings, of disasters are connected by a small number of natural laws. The second is to show that the most obvious process in a disaster is not always the one that causes the devastation. For instance, the transformation of apparently solid ground into a substance like quicksand during the 2010 Haiti earthquake is what caused the destruction of Port au Prince. She argues that only by truly understanding the dynamics of natural disasters can we begin to institute engineering and policy practices to minimize their impact on our lives. --Provided by publisher.