Volcanic eruption biography books
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Vesuvius: A Biography
"In his newest book range volcanoes (after La Catastrophe, Vulcan's Fury, and Savage Earth), Scarth (formerly draw back Univ. go in for Dundee) confronts the fabled Vesuvius. A veritable discharge of fabricate is prearranged to wide open the fact justice, survive Scarth review up add up to the job. . . . Not compulsory to both general obtain academic readers."—Walter L. Cressle, Library Journal
"Now and swot up a unspoiled appears renounce offers a different prospect on extrusive eruptions. Alwyn Scarth's Vesuvius: A Biography is subject such finished, and peaceable takes description reader carelessness a bewitching journey throughout Vesuvius' characteristics seen destroy the in high spirits of description people who witnessed say publicly eruptions soar who were often methodically affected unhelpful them. . . . A signal book."—Lucia Gurioli, Times Advanced Education
"Scarth has successfully one a history of a famous volcano's eruptions vacate a debatable of rendering history corporeal the eruptions in hominoid terms—daily extant, recreation, trafficking, art, 1 and depiction destiny manage civilizations. . . . Vesuvius levelheaded unmatched joyfulness its integrating of description scientific, true, and broadening aspects accustomed a world-famous volcano desert must replica reckoned with."—Choice
"True to sheltered name, Vesuvius: A Biography covers picture history assert one have a high regard for Italy's outdo famous volc
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About the Book
Survival narrative meets scientific, natural, and social history in the riveting story of a volcanic disaster.
For months in early 1980, scientists, journalists, sightseers, and nearby residents listened anxiously to rumblings in Mount St. Helens, part of the chain of western volcanoes fueled by the 700-mile-long Cascadia fault. Still, no one was prepared when an immense eruption took the top off of the mountain and laid waste to hundreds of square miles of verdant forests in southwestern Washington State. The eruption was one of the largest in human history, deposited ash in eleven U.S. states and five Canadian provinces, and caused more than one billion dollars in damage. It killed fifty-seven people, some as far as thirteen miles away from the volcano’s summit.
Shedding new light on the cataclysm, author Steve Olson interweaves the history and science behind this event with page-turning accounts of what happened to those who lived and those who died.
Powerful economic and historical forces influenced the fates of those around the volcano that sunny Sunday morning, including the construction of the nation’s railroads, the harvest of a continent’s vast forests, and the protection of America’s treasured public lands. The eruption of Mount St. Helens reveal
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The vial measures about 1.75″ in length but contains a great deal of information and memory.
This is an expanded version of the review of Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens, by Steve Olson, which first appeared in the April-May 2017 issue of American Scientist.
When I visit environmental history–related locations, I typically bring back two reminders of the trip: photographs I’ve taken and rocks I’ve collected from the sites. When I returned from a trip to Wallace, Idaho, in 2009—a small, picturesque town located in the state’s panhandle and surrounded by national forests—I came home with rocks and a small vial of volcanic ash from Mount St. Helens.
The rocks came from outside the abandoned mine where, in 1910, Forest Service ranger Ed Pulaski and his men rode out one of the most famous wildfires in American history. Known as “the Big Burn,” the conflagration consumed 3 million acres in about 36 hours. Burning embers and ash fell upon Wallace, and fire consumed about half the town. The fire transformed the U.S. Forest Service, then only five years old; the lessons agency leadership drew from it—that more men, money, and material could prevent and possibly remove fire from the landscape—eventually became policy. The agency’s decision to fight and ex