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Title: Krakatoa : The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester ISBN: 0-06-621285-5 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.53 (106 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Krakatoa, from discovery to rebirth
Comment: This remarkable treasure chest of historical trivia is laid out as a history of the Dutch East Indies, with center place being given to the island of Krakatoa. Anyone uninterested in the social, political, historical, and geological background to the famous eruption can just skip to its chapter, about halfway through the book. Simon Winchester has done an admirable job collecting and collating interviews, logs, diaries, reports, barographs, tide meter readings, you name it, to recreate the the horrific disaster, and set a few earlier errors straight.
One observer looks towards the beach, and see a monstrous wave, higher than the palm trees, sweeping along the shore. Others take note of the sea in the strait, writhing and surging, even though there is no wind and no clouds. Sailors caught in the ashfall suffer electric shocks from the charged cloud. A stone residence on a hill 110 feet high is destroyed by a wave that overtopped it by twenty feet. The sea becomes a slick of ash, pumice, debris, and bodies. (Winchester announces that he is censoring himself, in that last detail.) A woman in Ceylon who is killed by a surge is the most distant victim of the volcano. The airwave circles the globe seven times. The violent sunsets are recorded by landscape painters for years afterwards.
The run-up to the dramatic parts is a fairly interesting history of the Dutch in the East Indies, stuffed to bursting with footnoted asides. Krakatoa is the focal point throughout, though. Winchester even pinpoints the earliest Dutch map to represent the island, and then the first one to name it. There is an unmistakeably British thatchy-tweedy-fussiness in his manner. Even in the climactic narrative of the disaster, he finds room for a footnote to explain that Macassar was the source for an oil that spoiled wood finish, and necessitated the invention of a lace furniture drapery called an "antimacassar".
As for his idea that Krakatoa launched radical Islam in Indonesia, that's probably impossible to prove. The Japanese takeover of Dutch Pacific possessions in World War II, and the Saudi practice of exporting and subsidizing fundamentalist Wahabhi madrassas around the world probably had more to do with it. But it is certainly something to think about.
All in all, this is an informative and at times exciting account of one of the biggest and certainly the loudest natural disaster in recorded human history.
Rating: 4
Summary: Three books in one
Comment: Simon Winchester's new book, "Krakatoa: The Day The World Exploded", more or less consists of three shorter books woven together by a gigantic stitch. For some readers this might be an enticement but for others I would suspect the opposite to be true.
The first "book" is a mini-history of the Dutch involvement in present-day Indonesia several centuries ago with an emphasis on the Dutch East Asia Company. Winchester is good at giving a "flavor" of the times, and, while harsh on the Dutch, sets a nice tone for "Krakatoa". The second "book" contains the reason I give the work four stars instead of five. If the reader bought "Krakatoa" purely for learning about its eruption and demise, then the third chapter of "Krakatoa" might be where one stops. It is an overlong technical class concerning tectonic plate movements and scientific theorists proven and debunked. I began to have second thoughts about continuing "Krakatoa" while reading this chapter. However, having gotten through it, the remaining parts of this book are very good. Winchester's narrative is especially effective in two places.....his actual description of what it would have been like to have been near Krakatoa (and indeed, WAS like for some who gave the few surviving accounts of August 27, 1883) and the recounting of his own visit to Anak Krakatoa (the island formed in Krakatoa's wake) not too long ago.
I would recommend Winchester's book but with a caveat....be ready for "Krakatoa's" rises and falls...and by this I refer to the book and not the volcano, itself.
Rating: 3
Summary: Surprisingly difficult to read
Comment: I launched into this book on (what was supposed to be) a five hour plane ride, having read books such as Isaac's Storm, The Perfect Storm, Into Thin Air, et all which mixed weather, science, history, and a human element in a way that was educational and interesting. This looked to be the same. Three and a half hours later, as the pilot indicated that weather in New York was forcing us to circle indefinitely (and later take a detour to DC to refuel) my aggravation level was exacerbated by the fact I was stuck on the plane reading what ammounted to a science book about volcanos. The first 100+ pages of this book go into a high level of specificity about volcanos - the index lists out 27 page references to plate tectonics, for example, to give you a flavor.
At about its midpoint (as we landed in DC to refuel) the book picks up. There is some social history here - interesting stuff about Dutch colonialism in the region, the Muslim development of Indonesia, global forms of communication and at what stage they were developed - that sort of thing. There is some coverage of the affects of the eruption around the world as well, both on science and the population at large. In all, that amounts to about half - the more interesting half - of the book. I found myself skipping swaths of the book near the end that dealt with the scientific aspect.
It may be all in the expectation. But do know this book goes into the scientific side of the eruption of Krakatoa in more detail than you'd expect by reading the book jacket or the various breathless reviews excerpted from USA Today, Time Magazine, et al. I would have liked more political and social perspective. At any rate, should you be on a long flight, I'd recommend a second book for insurance purposes.
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Title: The Map That Changed the World : William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology by Simon Winchester ISBN: 0060931809 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester ISBN: 0198607024 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty by Caroline Alexander ISBN: 067003133X Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 15 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson ISBN: 0767908171 Publisher: Broadway Pub. Date: 06 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester ISBN: 006099486X Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: August, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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