Rating: 
Summary: Too long by half
Review: I guess what one reviewer called "tongue-in-cheek" I just found distracting. This book is nearly 400 pages long, yet the volcano pops on page 211. Need I say more? Not really, but (like Mr. Winchester) I will: I generally like anything geographical (Longitudes is the exemplar, but also The Mapmakers, Into Thin Air, Perfect Storm), or scientific/mathematical (The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, Simon Singh's books), so the subject matter appeals. But the writer is key (although I must say I found Galileo's Daughter a snoozer). Winchester digresses into the social aspects of the Krakatoa explosion a little too much for my liking. I don't mean the descriptions of how this catastrophe affected people, which are vivid and memorable, but the prehistory of the Dutch, etc, in what is now Indonesia. The plate tectonics background is fine, Winchester loves his geology, but I'd have rather he had gone on to tell us how scientists know about the other two eruptions in the history of the planet that exceeded Krakatoa in output. There are various excursions into the author's life which also failed to charm me.
Rating: 
Summary: Is this the map guy?
Review: Fascinating reading for sure, but how could someone who writes about maps changing the world put such deplorable maps in this book, which depends upon relative locations.
Rating: 
Summary: The Crack of Doom
Review: I bought this book assuming that since it was by a geologist, with a title referring to a geological phenomenon, the primary subject of "Krakatoa" would be geology.I was misled but nevertheless enchanted. Simon Winchester writes about the 1883 explosion (eruption would be the wrong word here) from every conceivable angle, including vulcanology and plate tectonics of course, but these subjects are accompanied by a history of the telegraph and the laying of transoceanic telegraph cables, the development of the spice trade, Dutch colonialism, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the East Indies, and quite a few discourses on evolution and biology, including a fascinating chapter called "Close Encounters on the Wallace Line." Forget Darwin's finches. Wallace's 'line' is the most convincing argument for evolution to emerge from the nineteenth century! Before we finally settle into Batavia on the eve of the humongous explosion of the "island with a pointed mountain," we also make a side-trip to Greenland with the author, in search of magnetite crystals. You are going to know exactly why "more than six cubic miles of rock...hurled dozens of miles into the stratosphere" on August 27, 1883 by the time you read the author's gripping and prolonged description of the actual event. Incidentally, Winchester explains the precise volcanological meaning of 'humongous.' Suffice to say that it involves an explosion the size of the one he describes in this book. Krakatoa (or more correctly 'Krakatau') lies in the Sunda strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra. There had been previous eruptions before the 1883 explosion, and the author speculates on their dates, e.g. A.D. 416, and intensity. In his final chapter, he also describes his own journey to the new island of Anak Krakatau (Son of Krakatau) which has been appearing and sometimes disappearing in the Indonesian archipelago since 1927. Our author survives his trip to Anak Krakatau's main crater, "spread ahead like some infernal dish of hell," but is almost done in by a six-foot lizard on the way back to his boat. He manages to save himself with the sacrifice of a chicken sandwich. "Krakatoa" is a very fine read, filled with mesmerizing details such as the floating rafts of pumice and skeletons that came ashore in Zanzibar in July, 1884, and the eerie behavior of ocean well before the volcano blew itself apart. Maps, poetry, and black-and-white photographs accompany the text.
Rating: 
Summary: Too dry for me
Review: Maybe I expected too much from this book. The author seems far too proud of his researching skills and never fails to mention useless bits of informtion that he found. He even goes on his own little personal trips down memory lane, which just made him seem a little pompous to me. But the overall amount of information made me feel like I was swimming against the current to get to the interesting things. Like telling me the life story of a man who did nothing but report the eruption.
For example, his plate tectonics explanation was far too complex and riddled with unrelated information. I found myself skipping over large portions because they were simply too technical or had nothing to do with plate tectonics.
Overall, I found the book uncompelling and the author's need to show off his researching skills snobby.
Rating:
Summary: Krakatoa: Sliced and Diced
Review: At first, I was mildly skeptical as to how any author, no matter how astute or acknowledged, could sustain with interest any temporary explosive phenomena for 432 pages. Succinctly put, I was wrong.
Simon Winchester presents with an enrolling style and curiously painless infusion of data not only a historical account of the geography of the area but informative and insightful facts dealing with every nameable subject of study.
He describes the chemistry, physics and geology of tectonic plate collisions, seduction zones and continental drifts with the ease of a souse chef mixing and stirring all the various ingredients to create a superb and unforgettable event.
No subject is too cerebral for Winchester to throw into his "chain of creation" pot. The geopolitical nook and crannies of the event that rocked the world in August 1883 are intermingled with the religious and sociological influences that existed before and afterwards. Its effects on Dutch colonial ambitions, the rise of militant Islamic forces and the advantages of a budding global communications technology still in its infancy are all expertly exposed, explained and expounded.
All of this however does not lessen Winchester's portrayal of the drama and intensity of the actual event. Rather we begin to see the eruption of Krakatoa as even more powerful with the forces of destruction and creation pulsing out from its atomized center in wave after wave of irresistible force.
Kudos is due to Simon Winchester for his comprehensive and masterly work. Also, thanks to his efforts and through our enlightened understanding we can now give kudos to Krakatoa - that changed our world forever.
Rating:
Summary: Another readable and fascinating account
Review: Winchester is one of the most talented science writers on geology today, and I'm not surprised he turned his talents to the subject of Krakatoa, as it's hard to find a more dramatic geological story anywhere. When Krakatoa blew up, a small island in the Sunda Straits off Sumatra, it pulverized 4.3 cubic miles of rock from the crater, a blast equivalent to 10,000 Hiroshima-type bombs (which was a 20-kiloton bomb). The blast was heard 3,000 miles away in China, and turned night into day in the area for 48 hours. The waves travelled around the world at least three times, and were recorded in the Thames River in London, half way around the world. A 100-foot tsunami crashed onto the nearby island of Sumatra, killing 20,000 people on Sumatra alone, and sinking 5000 small and large ships in the area. There were beautiful red sunsets all over the world for two years after the explosion due to all the dust that was blown into the atmosphere. Flaming lava bombs came down from the sky, some of them onto ships in the area. I once had the interesting experience of actually finding a ship captain's log who was in the Sunda Straits when this happened, and he thought Second Coming of Christ had arrived, and that, as the bumper sticker used to say, "Jesus is coming and boy is he pis_ed!" Although the Krakatoa explosion gets most of the attention since it happened during modern times, another bigger explosion occurred here in the U.S. about 10,000 years ago. Although not mentioned in the book, I thought I'd mention it here since we're on the subject. This was Crater Lake in Oregon. Crater Lake is the remains of Mt. Mazama, and when this volcano blew up in a similar explosion, it pulverized 7.1 cubic miles of rock, making it almost twice the size of Krakatoa. One can only wonder, given how much damage Mt. St. Helens did, how much worse it would have been had the explosion happened today. Overall, another interesting and fascinating account from Winchester.
Rating:
Summary: Not with a bang but a shambles
Review: On reading the draft of "Krakatoa". Winchester's editors and publishers should have said "Interesting notes, Simon. What kind of book are you going to write from them?" Because they didn't do so, we are left with this self-indulgent ramble of a book, lacking in structure or a decent narrative. Winchester clearly hasn't decided if he wants this to be a "Connections"-style run through everything that can be remotely connected with Krakatoa, a serious look at the political consequences of natural catastrophes, an argument that Krakatoa somehow founded the global village, a scientific explanation of volcanic phenomena, or yet another type of book. As a result, he tries to do it all--and fails on all counts. For a ramble through tangents, it is marginally informative and occasionally wrong (e.g. the father of time zones was Sanford Fleming, not Charles Dowd). The attempt to trace Indonesian fundamentalism back to Krakatoa is reductionist in the extreme. The technology story is patchy and repeatedly dropped. Even the science is not precise: a few pages after pedantically asserting that Krakatoa did not create tidal waves (because, you know, these sea waves had nothing to do with the moon), Winchester then refers to...tidal waves. I'm not giving this one star for the simple reason that it did manage to keep me (barely) engaged all the way through to the end. The factoids were interesting enough, and Winchester is clearly interested in what he's doing. It's just a pity that someone didn't send him back to the keyboard for another 6 months to produce one good book rather than fragments of 4 or 5.
Rating:
Summary: Exotic scientific and social history
Review: Another solid effort from Simon Winchester, this book is written in lucid, journalistic prose enhanced by numerous historic photos and illustrations. This was the most catastrophic event of the late 19th century. Winchester has at least four main themes, which he weaves together with admirable dexterity. In order of importance they are:1)continental drift and plate tectonics: the scientific theory underlying the explosion of Krakatoa and others like it is explained with great lucidity and in detail.2)social history--nearly as important(some might argue more important), this is the social history of imperialism and social exploitation on a grand scale mostly by the Dutch (also by the Portugese) on the island of Java. This history is explained from both the Western and the non-Western points of view. 3)disaster reporting--numerous eyewitness accounts enhance this rather terrifying account both from quite close-in and from afar, which comprises only about one quarter of the book, so you get a feel not only for the terrifying
dimensions of the event itself but also of the imperialistic cultural context in which it occurred. The world-wide repercussions -- scientific, social, and artistic-- are also discussed in some detail. 4) Natural history--quite a bit of information about the founders of the theory of evolution as they applied it to this remote area of the world, but also three excellent chapters at the book's end which describe the rebirth of the "son of Krakatoa" since 1883 and the rebirth of natural history on this ash-encrusted dystopic island.
The book is a bit chaotic at times because it tries to cover so much, including issues that some might consider of minor importance: for example, we get fascinating portraits of several of the Dutch governor generals; we get a fascinating portrait of Batavia, the large (one million) exclusive Dutch colonial outpost, built (as it probably was) by slave or woefully underpaid labor; we are told of the seeds of an important rubber plant from Brazil that miraculously escaped the holocaust aboard ship; we are told of a Muslim rebellion that was wiped out in its early stages by the Dutch military; we are told how the underground oceanic telegraph cables were laid; we are told of the Dutch novel that was influential in changing Dutch attitudes towards colonialism; we get eyewitness accounts of all the tremors which began in May, several months before the main event.
Rating:
Summary: No detail too insignificant
Review: While parts of this book were indeed interesting, I found the majority of it to be rather tedious and only marginally relevant. Mr. Winchester covers a wide range of topics somewhat related to Krakatoa, from the history of the Dutch East Indies, to plate tectonics and evolution, to the rise of Islam in Indonesia, with only one climactic chapter dealing with the actual explosion. Unfortunately, this book feels more like an incohesive collection of essays which have little to do with each other. In reading it, I got the sense that many of the chapters were written to fill pages, and make the book look more substantial. The low point for me was reading an entire chapter devoted to a traveling circus on Java, and an elephant which went on a rampage shortly before the mountain exploded. Add to that stories of people whose dinner plates fell and broke, and barometers with funny measurements. Even in the centerpiece chapter, the author devotes a dozen pages describing the beautiful sunsets which were seen around the world due to the volcano. There is no doubt that this book was well researched. Perhaps a little too well researched, with the author not knowing which details to omit. With a little editing, this book could have been slimmed down to about 100 pages.
Rating:
Summary: A History of the East Indies with an Exploding Volcano
Review: It took forever to get to the eruption. The book could have been 100 pages shorter and still covered the volcanic event. I purchased the book to read about the volcano not necessarily to learn about the Dutch and English history of the area.
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