Clive Oppenheimer challenges perceptions of volcanoes and dives deep into the science behind them in this entertaining jargon-free read
Review by Geordie Torr
‘Volcanoes get a bad press,’ writes volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer in this entertaining deep dive into the history and science of volcanology. And, to be fair, it’s not hard to see why. From Pompeii to Montserrat via Mount Pinatubo, Vesuvius and Krakatoa, volcanic eruptions and the subsequent tsunamis, pyroclastic flows, mudslides and clouds of sulphate aerosols (which apparently look like ‘wrinkled plant seeds’ at very high magnification), have destroyed cities and killed tens of thousands of people.
But Oppenheimer is keen to present another side to these awe-inspiring portals to the Earth’s roiling, incandescent interior – to show that ‘volcanoes mean more than menace and calamity’. And right from the start, he has been in the thick of things, climbing several of Indonesia’s many volcanoes (the country hosts more than any other, I now know) during his gap year.
‘As a volcanologist, I have dedicated my career to observing simmering craters, often at very close quarters, with a view to revealing their secrets,’ he writes. Indeed, so close were those quarters that his career could easily have been halted before he’d finished his PhD research on Stromboli in southern Italy, where he watched ‘molten cowpats’ of lava splat to the ground ‘just a few paces away’. ‘For one of [the] entries in my field notebook, the ink jerks up halfway through a word. I retrospectively labelled this jolt “blind terror”.’ Prudence finally won over and he went on to have many more fascinating and enlightening encounters with volcanoes all over the world, many of which he recounts here.
If you’ve ever wondered about anything to do with volcanoes and volcanic eruptions, you’ll more than likely find the answers within this book. And what’s more, you’ll more than likely understand them, thanks to Oppenheimer’s admirably clear, jargon-free explanations.
