Amazon.com Review
It may seem a stretch to connect a volcanic eruption with civil and religious unrest in Indonesia today, but Simon Winchester makes a compelling case. Krakatoa tells the frightening tale of the biggest volcanic eruption in history using a blend of gentle geology and narrative history. Krakatoa erupted at a time when technologies like the telegraph were becoming commonplace and Asian trade routes were being expanded by northern European companies. This bustling colonial backdrop provides an effective canvas for the suspense leading up to August 27th, 1883, when the nearby island of Krakatoa would violently vaporize. Winchester describes the eruption through the eyes of its survivors, and readers will be as horrified and mesmerized as eyewitnesses were as the death toll reached nearly 40,000 (almost all of whom died from tsunamis generated by the unimaginably strong shock waves of the eruption). Ships were thrown miles inshore, endless rains of hot ash engulfed those towns not drowned by 100 foot waves, and vast rafts of pumice clogged the hot sea. The explosion was heard thousands of miles away, and the eruption's shock wave traveled around the world seven times. But the book's biggest surprise is not the riveting catalog of the volcano's effects; rather, it is Winchester's contention that the Dutch abandonment of their Indonesian colonies after the disaster left local survivors to seek comfort in radical Islam, setting the stage for a volatile future for the region. --Therese Littleton --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
An erudite, fascinating account by one of the foremost purveyors of contemporary nonfiction, this book chronicles the underlying causes, utter devastation and lasting effects of the cataclysmic 1883 eruption of the volcano island Krakatoa in what is now Indonesia. Winchester (The Professor and the Madman; The Map That Changed the World) once again demonstrates a keen knack for balancing rich and often rigorous historical detail with dramatic tension and storytelling. Rather than start with brimstone images of the fateful event itself, Winchester takes a broader approach, beginning with his own viewing of the now peaceful remains of the mountain for a second time in a span of 25 years-and being awed by how much it had grown in that time. This nod to the earth's ceaseless rejuvenation informs the entire project, and Winchester uses the first half of the text to carefully explain the discovery and methods of such geological theories as continental drift and plate tectonics. In this way, the vivid descriptions of Krakatoa's destruction that follow will resonate more completely with readers, who will come to appreciate the awesome powers that were churning beneath the surface before it gave way. And while Winchester graphically illustrates, through eyewitness reports and extant data, the human tragedy and captivating scientific aftershocks of the explosion, he is also clearly intrigued with how it was "a demonstration of the utterly confident way that the world, however badly it has been wounded, picks itself up, continues to unfold its magic and its marvels, and sets itself back on its endless trail of evolutionary progress yet again." His investigations have produced a work that is relevant to scholars and intriguing to others, who will relish it footnotes and all.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
By late summer of this year, 120 years will have passed since the greatest natural disaster to occur on this planet since mankind began recording history some 30,000 years ago.It was exactly 10:02 a.m. on Monday, August 27, 1883 when the small volcanic island of Krakatoa in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra blew itself out of existence with an explosion that was heard thousands of miles away and that resulted in the deaths of over 36,000 people. That eruption is believed to be the loudest sound ever heard by human ears.
As Simon Winchester points out in this latest of his detailed historical-scientific investigative books, the vast majority of those 36,417 victims were killed not by the explosion itself, but by the enormous tsunami it created. This moving mountain of seawater wiped out whole towns; devastated the social and economic life of a region measured in thousands of miles; and was recorded on tide gauges as far away as France.
Winchester specializes in detailed accounts that shine light into odd or forgotten corners of history. His two most recent successful efforts in that genre were THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD and THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN. Now he has crafted a vividly written book of 400-plus pages about an event that was over in a matter of hours. KRAKATOA is certainly full of digressions that have only tangential relevance to its main subject --- but those digressions are so well researched, beautifully written and just plain interesting that they become assets rather than liabilities. The reader does not really object to the fact that the eruption doesn't begin until past the halfway point in Winchester's text.
The preliminaries that lead Winchester up to August 27th involve, among other things, giving proper credit to people like Alfred Russel Wallace --- whose theories of evolution paralleled those of Charles Darwin --- and Alfred Lothar Wegener, whose prescient views on continental drift, once ridiculed, were scientifically confirmed only in the 1960s. We get lengthy side-essays on subjects such as the science of plate tectonics; the spread of information technology spurred by the laying of the Atlantic Cable; the flora and fauna of the southwest Pacific; the history of colonial exploitation in that area by the British and Dutch; and the growth of international trade that placed Krakatoa directly on one of the busiest sea lanes in the world on that August morning. His thesis, backed by impressive geological evidence, is that Krakatoa had certainly erupted many times in the distant past --- before recorded history began --- and that it will inevitably do so again sometime in the unforeseeable future.
The small volcanic island had given plenty of warning. There had been a serious eruption the previous May and the warning signs of the big bang of late August were obvious. Yet, as so often happens in both natural and manmade catastrophes, no one put the pieces of the puzzle together in time. The eruption actually began on Sunday the 26th, but no one was prepared for the incredible disaster of the next morning. The captain of a passing British ship, awestruck, wrote in his log: "A fearful explosion...I am writing this blind in pitch darkness...The eardrums of over half my crew have been shattered. My last thoughts are with my dear wife. I am convinced that the day of judgment has come."
The island of Krakatoa --- six miles long and two miles wide --- was largely destroyed. Only tiny fragments of it remain today, along with an island, locally known as "The Child of Krakatoa," which has risen from the seabed where the volcano's crater once stood.
Winchester tells this story with masterly vividness. His research is thorough and he has the ability to translate things like the records of the pressure gauge at the gas works in Batavia (present-day Dakarta), 90 miles away, into telling historical evidence. He does seem, however, to be on somewhat shakier ground in contending that the catastrophe contributed to a rise in Islamic Fundamentalist fervor that has survived, grew and fed the political turmoil that grips independent Indonesia to this day. That may be stretching things rather further than is logical.
For American readers, KRAKATOA will serve as a vocabulary builder, with its references to genever (an alcoholic drink), godowns (warehouses), pye-dogs (??), solfataras (volcanic fissures) and other such technical terms. But readers will also learn about "subduction zones" and the prime role they play in the continuing slow-motion subterranean dance going on beneath the feet of all of us as continental plates rub up against each other, causing volcanic matter to gush up or be dragged down to await further Krakatoas. It seems that, if mankind somehow escapes blowing itself up, nature may do the job for us down the road in a few million years.
As Simon Winchester points out in this latest of his detailed historical-scientific investigative books, the vast majority of those 36,417 victims were killed not by the explosion itself, but by the enormous tsunami it created. This moving mountain of seawater wiped out whole towns; devastated the social and economic life of a region measured in thousands of miles; and was recorded on tide gauges as far away as France.
Winchester specializes in detailed accounts that shine light into odd or forgotten corners of history. His two most recent successful efforts in that genre were THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD and THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN. Now he has crafted a vividly written book of 400-plus pages about an event that was over in a matter of hours. KRAKATOA is certainly full of digressions that have only tangential relevance to its main subject --- but those digressions are so well researched, beautifully written and just plain interesting that they become assets rather than liabilities. The reader does not really object to the fact that the eruption doesn't begin until past the halfway point in Winchester's text.
The preliminaries that lead Winchester up to August 27th involve, among other things, giving proper credit to people like Alfred Russel Wallace --- whose theories of evolution paralleled those of Charles Darwin --- and Alfred Lothar Wegener, whose prescient views on continental drift, once ridiculed, were scientifically confirmed only in the 1960s. We get lengthy side-essays on subjects such as the science of plate tectonics; the spread of information technology spurred by the laying of the Atlantic Cable; the flora and fauna of the southwest Pacific; the history of colonial exploitation in that area by the British and Dutch; and the growth of international trade that placed Krakatoa directly on one of the busiest sea lanes in the world on that August morning. His thesis, backed by impressive geological evidence, is that Krakatoa had certainly erupted many times in the distant past --- before recorded history began --- and that it will inevitably do so again sometime in the unforeseeable future.
The small volcanic island had given plenty of warning. There had been a serious eruption the previous May and the warning signs of the big bang of late August were obvious. Yet, as so often happens in both natural and manmade catastrophes, no one put the pieces of the puzzle together in time. The eruption actually began on Sunday the 26th, but no one was prepared for the incredible disaster of the next morning. The captain of a passing British ship, awestruck, wrote in his log: "A fearful explosion...I am writing this blind in pitch darkness...The eardrums of over half my crew have been shattered. My last thoughts are with my dear wife. I am convinced that the day of judgment has come."
The island of Krakatoa --- six miles long and two miles wide --- was largely destroyed. Only tiny fragments of it remain today, along with an island, locally known as "The Child of Krakatoa," which has risen from the seabed where the volcano's crater once stood.
Winchester tells this story with masterly vividness. His research is thorough and he has the ability to translate things like the records of the pressure gauge at the gas works in Batavia (present-day Dakarta), 90 miles away, into telling historical evidence. He does seem, however, to be on somewhat shakier ground in contending that the catastrophe contributed to a rise in Islamic Fundamentalist fervor that has survived, grew and fed the political turmoil that grips independent Indonesia to this day. That may be stretching things rather further than is logical.
For American readers, KRAKATOA will serve as a vocabulary builder, with its references to genever (an alcoholic drink), godowns (warehouses), pye-dogs (??), solfataras (volcanic fissures) and other such technical terms. But readers will also learn about "subduction zones" and the prime role they play in the continuing slow-motion subterranean dance going on beneath the feet of all of us as continental plates rub up against each other, causing volcanic matter to gush up or be dragged down to await further Krakatoas. It seems that, if mankind somehow escapes blowing itself up, nature may do the job for us down the road in a few million years.
