Rating: 
Summary: Krakatoa : The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883
Review: If ever a book cried out for the services of a good editor, Simon Winchester's Krakatoa is that book. After writing his fascinating The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary it was hugely disappointing to plod through and then eventually abandon in frustration this bloated odyssey into minutiae and self-absorption. And like a bad B-movie, the monster, the volcano Krakatoa itself hardly puts in an appearance until page 150 only to have its dramatic tension decimated by a digressive chapter about the development of underwater communications cables. The book suffers from at least three major flaws that render it so disappointing. The first is that Winchester simply cannot resist pouring everything including the kitchen sink into his book. The second is that the author seems to believe that the longer a sentence is, the better. And finally Winchester cannot resist injecting himself repeatedly into the book. This reader suspects that Winchester's publisher was in on the fraud knowing that there was a problem and chose to hide it from perspective buyers rather than demand a rewrite. Read the cover sleeves and one is lead to believe that the book is all about Krakatoa. There is not a word about the fact that 90% of the book is about such varied topics as Dutch colonialism, plate tectonics, the early history of undersea cables, and even personal events from the life of the author. Call me stupid, but I expected to read a book about Krakatoa, not about the personal life of Simon Winchester and every non-volcanic tangent that the author found personally interesting. Had the sleeve synopsis borne any resemblance to the book, I would certainly not have started reading it. There were some good parts, but they were few and frustratingly far between!
Rating: 
Summary: Roller Coaster Ride for the Curious
Review: Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, columnist and reviewer for MyShelf and award-winning author
Krakatoa by Simon Winchester is a veritable roller coaster ride for the curious. It takes us on a dizzying path that-among other things--revises what we know about Darwin and relates it to what we never learned in school about the earth sciences, history, religion and politics. It covers much that general secondary and tertiary education in America neglects, geology and geography. Further, so much is new since the 1960s that what many of us studied "way back then" is hopelessly out of date. This is a book that will inform on newer earth science like tectonic plates, continental drift and more. It also energizes these subjects by relating them to what is going on in the world today and dramatizing the astonishing results they produce Winchester's language sometimes feels a bit stuffy but then-on the same page or in the same breath-he can be positively winsome. The first pages have the musty odor of the academic but when he swings into first person point of view on page 77, most curious readers will be glad they stayed on for the ride. It is also true that Winchester occasionally reaches for drama as he did with his tale about the baby circus elephant that was spooked by the intimations of the upcoming disaster. Such tactics seem wholly unnecessary for Krakatoa is a trip as exciting as any a reader will ever take and needs no embellishing in the hands of a scientist and writer as able as Simon Winchester. (Carolyn Howard-Johnson's first novel, This is the Place, has won eight awards. Her newly released Harkening has won three.)
Rating: 
Summary: Generally interesting, though somewhat overwritten
Review: This book wraps a lot of material around the eruption of Indonesia's Krakatoa volcano in 1883, some of it non-essential. Winchester's vivid descriptions of the eruption, including eye-witness accounts, will hold the reader's attention. His argument that the eruption was the first major event quickly reported around the world (by telegraph) is intriguing. His descriptions of Dutch colonial life in Indonesia make interesting reading because this subject is so rarely covered in English. However, Winchester almost certainly goes too far in theorizing that this disaster motivated Indonesia's anti-Dutch nationalism. The introduction to plate tectonics may be more than most readers want to know. It would have been helpful to learn more about the even greater eruption of Indonesia's Tambora volcano in 1815, which caused "the year without a summer."
Rating: 
Summary: Messy, but mezmerizing...sorta like a volcano!
Review: No wonder other reviewers have taken such diametrically opposite views on this book. Heck, you think they're confused, how about Simon Winchester's editor? I can hear the conversation with his publisher when he was pitching the book: "I've got this great idea for a book on the most horrific volcano eruption of modern times!" "Great, disaster dramas with a scientific bent sell big in the summer!" "Well, it's not really a disaster book. It's really a geology text with a volcano as a backdrop" "Whoa, the only rocks people are interested in these days are diamonds, Simon. I've got an idea. Why not tie in to the terrorism angle somehow, you know, blame it on the lava. And throw in some human interest stuff about the victims. You can cover the geology in all those wordy footnotes you like so much. And how about something on the miracle of life after death?" "Well," Winchester said, eyeing his advance check, "that makes no sense, but throw in a trendy half book jacket and some maps that no one will be able to follow and maybe we can pull it off!" And that is what he wrote. It's messy, it has absolutely no coherent theme or structure (really, did he even have an editor?), it wanders like a drunk at closing time, but oh that volcano. I honestly think the name of the island is half the allure. It screams tropical inferno, sort of like Winchester's book. Be forewarned: this is not what you think it's going to be...no matter what you thought it was going to be when you bought it. And his publisher would agree with you.
Rating:
Summary: Sign it out, but don't buy it
Review: I read Winchester's, "The Map that Changed the World", and so I came into this book with high expectations. I was sorely disappointed. Krakatoa's 1883 volcanic eruption was one of the most stupendous geological convulsions in recorded history. Much has been learned about it in recent years, as volcanology has advanced. Yet, coverage of these advances in science is sketchy at best. Rather, the book's chief thrust, if such a term can be used in rating a very disorganized text, appears to be a review of Dutch colonial policy and life in the latter part of the 19th century.
Sketches of lives affected by the eruption are varied in quality, and, again, are scattered hither and yon, in no particular order, throughout the book. A reader unacquainted with the history of this event may glean some information on several topics with which he or she is unrelated, but to persons who have previously read about the eruption, the book is a sad disappointment. One is legitimately led to wonder if Winchester simply decided to hurriedly capitalize on his fame from his previous book. I do not recommend the purchese of this book, but interested readers may wish to sign it out at a local library.
Rating: 
Summary: Lost on the Way to the Explosion: Krakatoa Misses the Mark
Review: In Greek Myth, Theseus entered the Labyrinth to kill the Minotaur, but Ariadne held the other end of the ball of string he carried so he could find his way back out of the maze. In Krakatoa, The Day The World Exploded: August 27, 1883, Simon Winchester is not so lucky. As he winds his way through the story behind one of the most destructive natural disasters of modern times, Winchester takes too many unnecessary turns-and encounters not deadly monsters, but an even worse fate: dead ends. The tumultuous setting is the country of Indonesia, created by volcanic action, colonized/oppressed by European powers, and home to Krakatoa, the pointed mountain that Winchester reminds us repeatedly, "was readying itself to erupt so terrifyingly". The author seems oblivious to the fact that the explosion itself is anticlimactic: the true challenge lies in making the story come alive, in giving it drama and action and humanity. Unfortunately, Winchester misses the mark every time. The first two chapters set the stage for the action, introducing the spice trade as the main motivation first for the Portuguese, and later the Dutch, to settle Indonesia, regardless of the fact that the Javanese people already lived there. Strangely, the island natives figure very little in Winchester's story, despite the fact that the majority of victims of the massive eruption of 1883 were of this ethnicity. It's in Chapter three, that Winchester loses the end of his "string" and begins to get lost in his own story-which despite his insistence, is not the story of Krakatoa. Instead, he bogs the reader down with a detailed explanation of plate tectonics, fine for an earth science textbook, but removed by 80 years-and about 200 pages-from the Krakatoa eruption, these scientific discoveries do not strike us as terribly relevant. Chapters based on speculation-such as other times in history that Krakatoa may have erupted, and whether or not animals can predict natural disasters-seem useless and out of place, as are the tedious descriptions of day to day life in pre-eruption colonial Java. The chapter on the eruption alone is a whopping 108 pages, and the brief follow-up chapter on the "ruined" Javanese is too thin to explain the unrest and subsequent militancy of the Indonesian people. One thing this book does have is facts, snippets of knowledge fascinating in their own right. For example, the sound of the actual explosion was heard 2,968 miles away; for months after the disaster, rafts of pumice stone laden with human remains floated as far as Zanzibar; and from 1883-1886, dust thrown up by Krakatoa created vivid sunsets and other unusual atmospheric effects around the world. What's missing are the reference points that we need to process these facts-a true sense of the human loss, the devastating consequences of the disaster. We need that mythical string to lead us through the maze. We're even missing the maze itself, because without structure and plot, this story is nothing more than a shapeless mass of trivia and conjecture.
Rating:
Summary: Covers everything in complete detail
Review: This fascinating book is an in-depth analysis of the famous 1883 explosion of the volcanic island of Krakatoa. It begins with a highly informative reporting of the history of the region, including a history of likely earlier eruptions. Then, the book launches into a breathtaking narrative of the events of 1883, when some 36,000 people were killed in the most deadly volcanic eruption in history. After that, the author looks at plate tectonics and seeks an explanation for the strange phenomenon, and then looks at the subsequent history of the island. This is quite a fascinating book. It really covers everything surrounding the 1883 eruption in complete detail. If anything, there is too much detail. But, if you are interested in Krakatoa, then this is *the* book that you must read. I highly recommend it!
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Subject Killed With Minutiae
Review: I really enjoy books that describe the 'bigger picture' that frame individual events. But this book is so far down that road that it lost the main event of the title. Honestly, knowing the construction of transoceanic telegraph cable or knowing if Wallace or Darwin was first to realize evolution theory is way more than I need to know to understand the context of devastating volcanic eruptions. When I finally got to Krakatoa blowing up, this same obsessive detailing detracted from the real power and horror of this terrible event. If you chose to read this, skip to the final third of the book....you'll be a lot more satisfied.
Rating:
Summary: excellent all around
Review: An excellent book that touches on geology, geography, history, evolution and politics. I have been reccomending it to people in the office, I bought a second one to lend out to friends.
Rating:
Summary: Great combination of history and geology.
Review: Winchester takes the reader on a wonderful journey, looking not only at the eruption of the volcano but also at the events that shaped the world at the time of the eruption. Winchester's story focuses on the geology of Krakatoa and on the history of Indonesia and the lasting effects of Dutch colonization. The book begins with a look at the history of Indonesia. The islands of Indonesia, that today make up the most populous Islamic country in the world, were key to the ambitions of European countries during the height of the Colonial Era due to the riches brought by its spices - pepper, clove, and nutmeg, what Winchester calls the "holy trinity of the Asian spice trade." Winchester's back-story and history of colonization set the stage for the dramatic events of 1883. Through this set-up the reader learns a great deal of geology. Indonesia sits at one of the crucial sites found on our Earth, located at a junction between two tectonic plates. To the south sits the Australian plate that is traveling north and subducting under the Eurasian plate. The results create one of the most tectonic and volcanically active regions on Earth. Winchester takes the reader through the thought processes that led to the unifying theory of geology, plate tectonics, and is the key to understanding how and why Krakatoa erupted. As in Winchester's other books his style is straightforward and easy to read. For many readers the thought of reading a book that covers both geology and history may seem daunting and dry, but Winchester envelopes the reader with a rich and vibrant writing style combined with over 50 illustrations, maps, and photos that keeps you turning page after page. We experience the eruption of Krakatoa from many perspectives, those of sailors traveling through the Sunda Strait at the time of the eruption, to colonial administrators living along the Straits. We are immersed in the lives of those people that experienced the eruption first hand and those that struggled to interpret and study the volcano's activities. In the end Winchester takes us up to the summit of Anak Krakatoa - the child of Krakatoa, the volcano reborn from the sea to experience the rebirth of this amazing island first hand. I highly recommend Krakatoa, The Day the World Exploded August 27, 1883 to anybody interested in geology, or history, or with a passion for both (like me). You will come away with a deeper understanding of the geology of plate tectonics and the area of the Java Trench as well as the history of Indonesia and how events on a small island on the morning of August 27, 1883 started us down a path to a connected, global community
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