If you have a copy of Basic Soil Mechanics (3rd or 4th edition are best), reading it cover-to-cover is inefficient. Here is the :

Buy the 3rd edition used. Right now. You can find it for $15–$30 online. It is black and white. The photos are grainy. The symbols look old-fashioned. And it doesn't matter. Soil mechanics hasn't changed. Sand still drains, clay still swells, and effective stress still rules the world. Whitlow’s 1997 edition is just as relevant today as it was then.

He explains the 1976 Teton Dam failure (USA) and the 1967 Aberfan disaster (Wales) not as moral failures, but as failures to calculate effective stress during rapid loading.