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Title: Volcanoes in Human History: The Far-Reaching Effects of Major Eruptions. by Jelle Zeilinga De Boer, Donald Theodore Sanders ISBN: 0-691-05081-3 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.71 (7 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Science and Humanity
Comment: This book is written in a clear and engaging style that conveys a scientific understanding of vulcanoloy and the consequences, both positive and negative, of volcanic activity on human life and society.
The authors incorporate a discussion of the physical processes that drive volcanic activity with vivid descriptions of historic eruptions. The book includes nine well-chosen case studies that highight differences in type, intensity and effects of eruption. The authors vividly describe the effects of volcanic eruptions on natural and human environments, human history and human behavior. Throughout the book are highly explanatory yet simple illustrations of the natural processes at work and the specific volcanoes under study.
The authors convey the inspiring power of volcanic acitivity and place natural and human impacts within short and long-term perspectives. This book is clear and informative science coupled with thought provoking history and engaging human interest.
From plate tectonics and environmental impact, to entertaining stories of the effects of volcanic eruptions on art and literature or the creation of mythology, to thought-provoking effects on human life, migration and economic decline - its all here.
Rating: 5
Summary: Volcanoes in Human History
Comment: Volcanoes in Human History: The Far-Reaching Effects of Major Eruptions written by Jelle Zeilinga de Boer and Donald Theodore Sanders is an engaging book about the awesome power of volcanoes its effects and how volcanoes are born. This book takes the reader on a short journey through time as we explore the origins and mechanisms of volcanism and shoing us how this affected human history, societies, cultures, and the environment.
This book explores nine volcanic eruptions, diccussing the geological setting in terms of plate tectonics; the theory that virtually rigid segments of the earth's crust move about over a less rigid layer and collide, and that the collisions give rise to earthquakes and volcanic activity. Then the book goes over the human terms following the aftereffects of volcanic eruption.
Volcanism is the surface manifestation of a living earth, the author likens a volcanic eruption as the plucking of a long tight-stretched string representing time: when the string is plucked it vibrates. Where the string is plucked is the volcanic activity or eruption where a great deal of energy is being released, the vibrations will have high amplitudes and short wavelengths. These vibrations will be powerful, but only last for a short time. But, as the vibration flows down the string (time), the amplitudes will decrease and the wavelengths increase, whithat the aftereffects will become less intense and they will last longer. The eruption will last days, volcanic aftereffects will last months, Climate change, Famine, epidemics, diaspora will last years; Economic and ecologic revival will last decades, and cultural effects will last centuries.
The books narrative is easy to read and is very understandable making this subject easy to understand. Most of us see a volcano erupt on the news and that is all we know until the news shows us another eruption. What we are not given is the far-reaching effects of what is really happening within the earth. Volcanism is the earth's way of renewing itself and releaving the tremendous pressures from deep within.
Reading this book will give the reader a greater appreciation about what really goes on, on the earth we walk upon. As the population of the earth increases, the effects of volcanism will be magnified, it is crucial that we understand the origin of volcanism as well as the devastation it can cause, and the aftereffects, for good or ill, that can linger for years, even decades, to come.
This is an incrediblly well-told story that is informative but nontechinical.
Rating: 5
Summary: Living Under The Volcano
Comment: We are used to having to deal with changes in the weather, but twenty years ago, meteorologists were having to deal with a new atmospheric manifestation. Mount Saint Helens had blown up in the state of Washington, and had affected air quality, air travel, and emotions in the region, and had world-wide weather consequences. It certainly was not the first time a volcano shaped the weather, for volcanoes have had major effects on weather and even history. _Volcanoes in Human History: The Far-Reaching Effects of Major Eruptions_ (Princeton University Press) by Jelle Zeilinga de Boer and Donald Theodore Sanders takes nine famous or obscure volcanoes and demonstrates that volcanoes are an active part of our lives.
Surprisingly, volcanic effects are not all bad. Volcanic soils are very fertile, and we use plenty of minerals of volcanic origin. The gases from volcanoes made the Earth's atmosphere before photosynthesis took over. Many geologists think that all the water on earth was originally released by volcanoes. The book shows a very interesting aspect of Hawaii, in that it is in the middle of the Pacific plate, not near the edges where the plates are barging into each other and which are the usual sites of volcanic activity. The plate carrying the islands is floating slowly over a particular hotspot, which pokes up as the plate floats over it, and gives rise to the familiar Hawaiian Island chain. Iceland is on such a hotspot, too, and besides that, it straddles the Mid-Atlantic ridge, where the ocean floor is being split apart as the plates separate at about two centimeters a year. The Bronze Age eruption of Thera in the Mediterranean directly weakened Crete, which permitted the Greeks to expand into the area; Mycenaean Greece was given the boost that made it the ancestor of classical Greece, with incalculable effects on the entire Western civilization ever since. Mount Pelée's explosion in Martinique in 1902 stopped an election that would have furthered the political advancement of black and mixed-race people on the island, and throughout the French colonies. The list of contingencies is fascinating.
All of the volcanoes described here are still active; we have not heard the last of them, and perhaps there is someday going to be a blast like that in Toba in the Pacific 74,000 years ago, which was thousands of times bigger than Mount St. Helens, and may have affected human evolution. This surprising, informative book is a useful look at how volcanoes effect land, sea, humans, and society. Even those of us not under the shadow of a volcano are living in the volcano zone.
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Title: The Last Days of St. Pierre: The Volcanic Disaster that Claimed 30,000 Lives by Ernest Zebrowski ISBN: 0813530415 Publisher: Rutgers University Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
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Title: Encyclopedia of Earthquakes and Volcanoes (Facts on File Science Library) by David Ritchie, Alexander E., Phd Gates ISBN: 0816045836 Publisher: Facts on File Pub. Date: 01 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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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: Raging Planet: Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and the Tectonic Threat to Life on Earth by Bill McGuire ISBN: 0764119699 Publisher: Barron's Educational Series Pub. Date: 07 February, 2002 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: LA Catastrophe: The Eruption of Mount Pelee, the Worst Volcanic Disaster of the 20th Century by Alwyn Scarth ISBN: 0195218396 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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