The Last Day Wrath, Ruin, and Reason in the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755

The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 was no run-of-the-mill misfortune—it was a watershed moment that shook the pillars of an inveterate social order and sent reverberations throughout the Western world. Earth, water, wind, and fire all conspired to produce a hellish catastrophe that lasted for a full five days and left Lisbon thoroughly annihilated. Nicholas Shrady’s unique account of this first modern disaster and its aftereffects successfully articulates the outcome of the earthquake—the eighteenth-century equivalent of a mass media frenzy giving rise to a host of other fascinating developments, such as disaster preparedness, landmark social reform, urban planning, and the birth of seismology.

Nicholas Shrady is a writer and journalist whose books include Sacred Roads: Adventures from the Pilgrimage Trail and Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa. He has written for Architectural Digest, Travel & Leisure, Forbes, and The New York Times Book Review.