On November 1, 1755--All Saints' Day--a massive earthquake struck Europe's Iberian Peninsula and destroyed the city of Lisbon. Churches collapsed upon thousands of worshippers celebrating the holy day. "Earthquakes in Human History" tells the story of that calamity and other epic earthquakes. The authors, Jelle Zeilinga de Boer and Donald Theodore Sanders, recapture the power of their previous book, "Volcanoes in Human History." They vividly explain the geological processes responsible for earthquakes, and they describe how these events have had long-lasting aftereffects on human societies and cultures. Their accounts are enlivened with quotations from contemporary literature and from later reports.

In the chaos following the Lisbon quake, government and church leaders vied for control. The Marques de Pombal rose to power and became a virtual dictator. As a result, the Roman Catholic Jesuit Order lost much of its influence in Portugal. Voltaire wrote his satirical work "Candide" to refute the philosophy of "optimism," the belief that God had created a perfect world. And the 1755 earthquake sparked the search for a scientific understanding of natural disasters.

Ranging from an examination of temblors mentioned in the Bible, to a richly detailed account of the 1906 catastrophe in San Francisco, to Japan's Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, to the Peruvian earthquake in 1970 (the Western Hemisphere's greatest natural disaster), this book is an unequaled testament to a natural phenomenon that can be not only terrifying but also threatening to humankind's fragile existence, always at risk because of destructive powers beyond our control."

With one million dead, and just as many forced to emigrate, the Irish Famine (1845-52) is among the worst health calamities in history. Because historical records of the Victorian period in Ireland were generally written by the middle and upper classes, relatively little has been known about those who suffered the most, the poor and destitute. But in 2006, archaeologists excavated an until then completely unknown intramural mass burial containing the remains of nearly 1,000 Kilkenny Union Workhouse inmates. In the first bioarchaeological study of Great Famine victims, Jonny Geber uses skeletal analysis to tell the story of how and why the Famine decimated the lowest levels of nineteenth century Irish society.Seeking help at the workhouse was an act of desperation by people who were severely malnourished and physically exhausted. Overcrowded, it turned into a hotspot of infectious disease--as did many other union workhouses in Ireland during the Famine. Geber reveals how medical officers struggled to keep people alive, as evidenced by cases of amputations but also craniotomies. Still, mortality rates increased and the city cemeteries filled up, until there was eventually no choice but to resort to intramural burials. Deceased inmates were buried in shrouds and coffins--an attempt by the Board of Guardians of the workhouse to maintain a degree of dignity towards these victims. By examining the physical conditions of the inmates that might have contributed to their institutionalization, as well as to the resulting health consequences, Geber sheds new and unprecedented light on Ireland's Great Hunger.