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Title: Volcano Cowboys by Dick Thompson ISBN: 0-312-28668-6 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (15 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Fascinating!
Comment: This is a fascinating book about the evolution of volcano science written in language easy enough for the layperson to understand. The author discusses how the eruptions of Mt. St. Helen's, plus several other volcanoes around the world helped develop methods for making more accurate predictions and alert systems. This book is also about the sometimes explosive relationship between volcano scientists, journalists, politicians, and people living near volcanoes. There are so many interesting facts about volcanoes in this book, including the many, many ways in which volcanoes can be an extremely dangerous and deadly force of nature. A must read for anyone living near a volcano.
Rating: 4
Summary: A pretty good book
Comment: It's easy to like a book when virtually all the characters are friends and professional colleagues. And it's equally easy to enjoy a story that recaps significant parts of your own satisfying career. So, as a (recently retired)32-year career volcanologist with the U.S. Geological Survey ... who spent three years on the staff of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and who was later involved to varying degrees with the eruptions of Mount St. Helens in 1980, El Chichon in 1982 and Mount Pinatubo in 1991 ... I enjoyed reading Dick Thompson's "Volcano Cowboys."
My degree of enjoyment was muted, though, by Thompson's over emphasis on discord and disagreement within the cadre of USGS volcanologists. In my experience, cooperation and agreement dominated. I think I made this feeling clear when Thompson interviewed me. However, I remember his questions tending to be phrased in such a way that almost any answer would bolster the notion of internal USGS discord, between his "Musketeers and Stratigraphers" and between his "Coneheads and Meatheads". My impression was then, and is now, having read the book, that Thompson's mind was made up before he talked with me. Of course, if there aren't SOME disagreements during a group scientific endeavor, the scientists aren't doing their jobs. Whether such wrangling is the rule, rather than the exception, is a call difficult to make by an outside party.
It's often said that sex and violence are what sell books. Perhaps the pursuit of this notion helped shape this book's story emphasis? Incidentally, speaking of sex, the book almost completely ignores female scientists who have made significant contributions to USGS volcano studies. Terry Keith, Maggie Mangan and Tina Neal come quickly to mind.
Here's another reason for my muted enjoyment. Thompson repeatedly marginalizes and denigrates the value of studying Hawaiian volcanoes as training for understanding the more-violent types, such as Mount St. Helens and Pinatubo. In fact, near the end of the book, he pooh poohs the idea that such training is valuable. No one would disagree that composite volcanoes and Hawaiian shield volcanoes differ in many ways. It may be equally important to remember, though, that every volcano is unique in ways that make broad generalizations virtually useless, even perhaps dangerous. Training at a Mount St. Helens, rather than at HVO, is not necessarily a better way to prepare for understanding the behavior of a Pinatubo, and vice versa.
An important consideration in trying to learn about volcano behavior, one not pointed out in the book, is the frequency with which the different types of volcanoes erupt. Composite volcanoes, like Mount St. Helens and Pinatubo, tend to erupt with repeat times of hundreds of years. Most of the dormant interval is quiet time, with little if any volcano unrest. When they do come back to life, composite volcanoes seem to give volcanologists a few weeks or months of lead time to gather information that can help with forecasting eruption. In stark contrast, a Hawaiian type of volcano tends to erupt with repeat times of only a few years, and provides lots of scientific information about its behavior in the interim. Imagine the folly and futility of establishing a volcano observatory at a composite volcano and then having to wait through multiple human generations before having even one eruption to study! A volcano SWAT team is great for helping to address short-fused needs. But only long-term systematic studies at one volcano (or more, if necessary resources are available) hold much promise of making breakthroughs in a more generic understanding of these powerful outlets for Earth's internal energy.
The book's shortcomings notwithstanding, I recommend it to anyone interested in volcanoes and their eruptions. It has much to offer, in understandable and engaging language, about the complex workings of volcanoes and of human societies that complicate the mission of those "volcano cowboys", who are just trying to round up enough information to make life a bit safer for us all.
Rating: 5
Summary: Great book, even for geologists!
Comment: Volcano Cowboys is an excellent book about the real people behind the science. If you are looking for a book about how volcanoes form - this is not it, but it you are looking for a book about how real science is done read Volcano Cowboys!! These guys aren't the stereotypical geeky scientists we often picture sequestered in labs and pale-skinned from lack of sunlight. This is what field geology is all about - getting your feet dirty (and your pants and shirt and hands and hair)! This book is also a candid view of the politics involved in science and also the fact that volcanology, like all science, is a work-in-progress. No, we don't know everything there is to know about how volcanoes work - and that is what makes geology so very exciting!
My one disappointment with the book were the pictures/figures. I want to see a diagram of Mt. St. Helens after the eruption to compare with the nice diagram of "before"!!! The photos are also a little hard to see in the paperback version.
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Title: Chasing Lava: A Geologist's Adventures at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory by Wendell A. Duffield ISBN: 0878424628 Publisher: Mountain Press Publishing Company Pub. Date: 01 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Krakatoa : The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester ISBN: 0066212855 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Surviving Galeras by Stanley Williams, Fen Montaigne ISBN: 0618031685 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company Pub. Date: 17 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Out of the Crater by Richard V. Fisher ISBN: 0691002266 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 07 December, 1998 List Price(USD): $42.50 |
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Title: Volcanology by Jacques-Marie Bardintzeff, Alexander R. McBirney ISBN: 076371318X Publisher: Jones & Bartlett Publishers Pub. Date: 01 March, 2000 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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