This Is Chance!
The Great Alaska Earthquake, Genie Chance, and the Shattered City She Held Together
The thrilling, cinematic story of a community shattered by disaster—and the extraordinary woman who helped pull it back together
“A powerful, heart-wrenching book, as much art as it is journalism.”—The Wall Street Journal
“A beautifully wrought and profoundly joyful story of compassion and perseverance.”—BuzzFeed (Best Books of the Year)
In the spring of 1964, Anchorage, Alaska, was a modern-day frontier town yearning to be a metropolis—the largest, proudest city in a state that was still brand-new. But just before sundown on Good Friday, the community was jolted by the most powerful earthquake in American history, a catastrophic 9.2 on the Richter Scale. For four and a half minutes, the ground lurched and rolled. Streets cracked open and swallowed buildings whole. And once the…
Jon Mooallem is a longtime writer at large with The New York Times Magazine and a contributor to numerous other radio shows and magazines, including This American Life and Wired. His first book, Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America was chosen as a notable book of the year by The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, NPR's Science Friday, and Canada's National Post, among others. He lives on Bainbridge Island, outside Seattle, with his family.