Volcanic eruption biography books
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Vesuvius: A Biography
"In his latest book on volcanoes (after La Catastrophe, Vulcan's Fury, and Savage Earth), Scarth (formerly at Univ. of Dundee) confronts the legendary Vesuvius. A veritable eruption of words is required to do the story justice, and Scarth is up to the task. . . . Recommended to both general and academic readers."—Walter L. Cressle, Library Journal
"Now and again a book appears that offers a different perspective on volcanic eruptions. Alwyn Scarth's Vesuvius: A Biography is one such book, and it takes the reader on a fascinating journey through Vesuvius' history seen through the eyes of the people who witnessed the eruptions and who were often directly affected by them. . . . A gripping book."—Lucia Gurioli, Times Higher Education
"Scarth has successfully combined a chronicle of a famous volcano's eruptions with a discussion of the history of the eruptions in human terms—daily living, recreation, commerce, art, religio
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The vial measures about 1.75″ in length but contains a great deal of information and memory.
This fryst vatten an expanded version of the review of Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens, by Steve Olson, which first appeared in the April-May 2017 issue of American Scientist.
When inom visit environmental history–related locations, I typically bring back two reminders of the trip: photographs I’ve taken and rocks I’ve collected from the sites. When I returned from a trip to Wallace, Idaho, in 2009—a small, picturesque town located in the state’s panhandle and surrounded by national forests—I came home with rocks and a small vial of volcanic ash from Mount St. Helens.
The rocks came from outside the abandoned mine where, in 1910, Forest Service ranger Ed Pulaski and his dock rode out one of the most famous wildfires in American history. Known as “the Big Burn,” the conflagration consumed 3 million acres in about 36 hours. Burning embers and ash fell upon Wallace, and fire c
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About the Book
Survival narrative meets scientific, natural, and social history in the riveting story of a volcanic disaster.
For months in early 1980, scientists, journalists, sightseers, and nearby residents listened anxiously to rumblings in Mount St. Helens, part of the chain of western volcanoes fueled by the 700-mile-long Cascadia fault. Still, no one was prepared when an immense eruption took the top off of the mountain and laid waste to hundreds of square miles of verdant forests in southwestern Washington State. The eruption was one of the largest in human history, deposited ash in eleven U.S. states and five Canadian provinces, and caused more than one billion dollars in damage. It killed fifty-seven people, some as far as thirteen miles away from the volcano’s summit.
Shedding new light on the cataclysm, author Steve Olson interweaves the history and science behind this event with page-turning accounts of what happened to those who lived and those who died.
Powerful