In August of 1883, one of the biggest volcanic eruptions in the history of world began.  The island of Krakatoa (at least 60,000 years old) was part of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and the eruption annihilated it.  It caused a tsunami that killed nearly 40,000 people and the sound it made was heard thousands of miles away.  I discussed this with the River Action Environmental Book Club and we found it engrossing.  Simon Winchester is an excellent nonfiction writer with popular appeal.   Krakatoa was the first major catastrophe that occurred after the invention of the submarine telegraph, so it was instrumental in making the world a “global village”.  Volcanoes are probably the origin of the earth’s atmosphere as well as our fertile soils.  They are fearsome but also fascinating, destructive but also creative.  Winchester is one of those authors that connects the dots–along with the obvious natural sciences, he includes politics, economics,  history, religion. literature, movies, journalism, geography.  His section on continental drift and plate tectonics was especially interesting because the person who proposed it, Alfred Wegener, was told his ideas (published in 1915) were “dangerous, unsettling, ungodly, and evil”.  He died at age 50 having been ridiculed, vilified, and cruelly denied his academic reward.   Now Wegener’s ideas are accepted and he’s considered somewhat of a genius.  To find out more of about him, read Ending in Ice: The Revolutionary Idea and Tragic Expedition of Alfred Wegener by Roger McCoy, 551.092 MC.

I’m reading Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman right now.