A companion volume to Earthquakes in Human History, with a slightly different tone. Earthquakes considered individual earthquakes, while Volcanoes in Human History is more often about volcanic zones than individual eruptions. As in Earthquakes the authors’ intent is to expose liberal arts students to geological realities, especially how volcanic eruptions can affect history and culture long after the lava has cooled. The authors use the analogy of a plucked string, where the initial vibrations are large but it takes some time for the smaller waves to finally die out.

After a brief discussion of volcanology, the book’s second chapter concerns the Hawaiian Islands. The myths of the native people concerning the volcano goddess Pele are treated, but so is the role of the islands in establishing plate tectonics and mantle hot spots. Chapter 3 is about Thera and its potential role in ending the Minoan Empire. I’m a little annoyed at the authors casual dismissal of the Egyptological date for the eruption between 1504 to 1450 BC based on pottery sequencing; they prefer a between 1690 and 1620 BC based on ice cores and tree rings. The bothersome statement is “Rather than relying on such imprecise information, we should accept the globally correlated scientific data”. This implies that Egyptology is unscientific and imprecise; and the authors note in a footnote that the ice core and tree ring data is assumed to relate to Thera, not definitely linked.

The famous (although the authors note there have been many others) eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD is next. It occurs to me that all the volcanoes in Europe that erupted between Classical times and the start of the scientific revolution were a little strange on a world scale. Thera, Vesuvius, Stromboli, Volcano, Etna, and the Iceland volcanoes are all quite different from those on the Pacific Rim. This unfamiliarity may have hampered geology in general, since it took some time for geologists to recognize volcanoclastic deposits like ignimbrite for what they were. The authors also miss a bet; the small Italian town of Pozzuoli is mentioned as the site of the Temple of Serapis, used by Charles Lyell to demonstrate sea level changes, and also as the site of the martyrdom of Saint Januarius, who is still invoked when Vesuvius threatens. However, it is not also described as the source of pozzolan, a volcanic ash which, when mixed with calcium oxide (lime) and water undergoes a “pozzolan reaction”, a key step in making concrete. The Romans knew about this stuff and used pozzolan concrete for the dome of the Pantheon and the docks and breakwaters at Ostia (pozzolan concrete is “hydraulic”; it will cure underwater).

The great fissure eruption of Lakagigar in 1783 killed half the cattle in Iceland, three quarters of the sheep and horses, and good chunk of the population. The authors estimate 50 million tons of sulfur dioxide and 17 million tons each of hydrogen chloride and hydrogen fluoride. Crops were affected throughout the northern hemisphere, and the Mississippi froze as far south as New Orleans that winter. Benjamin Franklin suggested the unusual weather might be connected to the eruption.

The Tambora and Krakatau eruptions come next; both have already been discussed in other reviews (although the authors suggest that the Tambora eruption, in addition to all the other grief, also contributed to the deadliness of the worldwide cholera epidemic from 1816 to 1823 – the weather stress from the eruption may have pushed things over the edge.

The Mt. Pelée eruption of 1902 gets a political link, doubtless appreciated by the students this book was intended for. One of the reasons the town of St. Pierre wasn’t evacuated was an election was scheduled for May 11th. The Socialist party had made a strong showing in the preliminary balloting, and the governor of the island supposed didn’t want to risk a Socialist victory by depopulating the island’s largest city. He went to St. Pierre to reassure the locals that there was no risk, and died with 30000 other people in a pyroclastic flow on May 8th. The election was never held.

The 1961 eruption of Tristan da Cunha displaced the entire population of that island to England, which the Trist’ns hated. After repeated pleas to the government they made it back in 1963, after threatening to charter their own ship to do it.

Finally, Mt. St. Helens concludes – a relatively minor eruption that got way more attention than it deserved by virtue of occurring in the US. I can only say if you liked St. Helens, you’ll love Yellowstone or Mammoth Lake if they ever go.

Pretty good, lots of interesting geological and historical facts. The Eurocentric view is a little disappointing – nothing about Japanese volcanoes, Mt. Pinatubo, Central American volcanoes, the lahar from Nevada del Ruiz that killed 20000 people in Columbia in 1985, other South American volcanoes, or the African volcanoes with their unique carbonitite lava. You can’t have everything. ( )