Product Description

Simon Winchester’s brilliant chronicle of the destruction of the Indonesian island of Krakatoa in 1883 charts the birth of our modern world. He tells the story of the unrecognized genius who beat Darwin to the discovery of evolution; of Samuel Morse, his code and how rubber allowed the world to talk; of Alfred Wegener, the crack-pot German explorer and father of geology. In breathtaking detail he describes how one island and its inhabitants were blasted out of existence and how colonial society was turned upside-down in a cataclysm whose echoes are still felt to this day.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #198095 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Amazon.co.uk
In Krakatoa Simon Winchester, author of The Map That Changed the World and The Professor and the Madman, focuses his considerable research powers on one of the most cataclysmic events of modern history: the volcanic eruption, in 1883, of the South East Asian island of Krakatoa, which resulted in the deaths of 36,000 people and sent shock-waves around the world. But what at the time was a mysterious, almost supernatural phenomenon has become, under the precepts of the contemporary science of plate tectonics, explicable if no less tragic.

Winchester veers between eyewitness accounts by survivors and the limited scientific measurements of the time in an attempt to describe the indescribable. The event "is still said to be the most violent explosion ever recorded and experienced by modern man", he writes. "Six cubic miles of rock had been blasted out of existence, had been turned into pumice and ash and uncountable billions of particles of dust." Yet words and numbers can barely hint at the scale of the calamity, which resulted in tsunamis that washed whole villages into the ocean and forever changed the very topography of the area.

The author also explores the social and cultural topography, noting that "Orthodox Islam, its revival in part triggered by tragic events such as the great cataclysm, was totally transformed in Java during the nineteenth century, with fundamentalism, militancy and profound hostility to non-Muslims its watchwords". At times Winchester seems to overstate his case, and the link he finds between Krakatoa and the rise of anti-Western sentiment in the Islamic world isn't especially convincing. But by weaving together the disaster with science, communications, politics, religion and economics, he has come up with a comprehensive and often fascinating glimpse into the way the world, and our perception of it, can change in an instant. --Shawn Conner, Amazon.ca

About the Author
Simon Winchester was born and educated in England, has lived in Africa, India and Asia, and now divides his time between the US and Scotland. Having reported from almost everywhere during an award-winning twenty-year career as a Guardian foreign correspondent, he is currently the Asia-Pacific editor for Condé Nast Traveler and contributes to a number of American magazines, as well as to the Daily Telegraph, the Spectator and the BBC. He is the author of several bestselling works of non-fiction.

Customer Reviews

The day the world exploded
This is a marvelous book. Winchester not only covers the explosion of Krakatao in 1883 but also every event surrounding and leading up to it. He sets off with telling us, why Krakatao (and every other volcano) happen to be there in the first place. There is also a full history on the mountain itself, which I found rather intriguing given that it cannot be easy unearthing non-geological (I don’t want to call it eye-witness) evidence going as far back as the fourth and fifth century AD. He then covers the ‘human’ history and settlement of the area before setting off on a very detailed description on what precisely happened in 1883. This includes a rather detailed description on the effects of all this on the local population – at times you may feel that the Tsunami recorded off Indonesia in December 2004 was a rather benign event compared to Krakatao. The most fascinating to me personally are the eye-witness reports made by captains passing within the vicinity (if you can call it that) of Krakatao.
The rising of Baby-Krakatao from 1928 sort of gives me a dubious feeling because every island previously had exploded at some point and it is all too predictable that Baby-Krakatao will do so, too.
Similarly to others here, I found the chapter on the ‘rebellion of the ruined people’ a bit out of place because there is no obvious link to the explosion of Krakatao and I couldn’t understand why there should be.
Apart from that reservation, this is an excellent book. You will enjoy every bit of it.

Roaming Through The Ring of Fire
Despite the title, "Krakatoa" isn't just about the "day the world exploded." Perhaps a third of the book is devoted to the cataclysmic detonations that took place on August 27, 1883 and their immediate aftermath. This part of the story is gripping and hard to put down, but the rest of the book is fascinating in its own right.

Winchester is a master of elegant digression. "Krakatoa" chronicles the Portuguese and Dutch exploitation of the East Indies, the spread of Islam as a political force in Indonesia, plate tectonics, subduction zones, the ice in Greenland, the post-eruption growth and re-vegetation of Anak Krakatoa (the "child of Krakatoa"), the evolutionary theories of Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin, and a host of interesting topics and characters in between. In its amiable style, "Krakatoa" reminded me of Nicholas Clapp's "Road to Ubar" and "Sheba"--although neither have anything to do with volcanoes, both books resemble "Kraktoa" in that they are travelogues that explore history in a well-written and entertaining way. It's all in the journey, not in the destination.

If you are looking for a book about how volcanoes blow up and destroy the things around them, you'll probably enjoy only a few chapters of Winchester's book (although I think you will enjoy them a great deal). For those who want to learn about how volcanoes have changed history (which is at least part of Winchester's thesis), check out David Keys' "Catastrophe" and the fascinating companion video of the same name, as well as De Boer & Sanders, "Volcanoes in Human History" and Pellegrino's "Unearthing Atlantis." For a book about the destruction wrought by volcanoes, try "Vulcan's Fury: Man Against the Volcano," by Alwyn Scarth.

Surf's up, Dude!
KRAKATOA is an appealing and reader-friendly piece of history and science. The populist approach by author Simon Winchester reminds me of Carl Sagan.

It isn't until page 233 of this 390-page hardback that the narrative arrives at 10:02 AM on August 27, 1883, when the volcanic island of Krakatoa, situated in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, blew up. The explosion was heard 2,968 miles away - roughly the distance between Philadelphia and San Francisco, ejected enough dust into the upper atmosphere to color sunsets worldwide for the next three years, and generated waves strong enough to register on tide gauges on England's south coast. Of the Earth's volcanic blasts known to history, this was the fifth largest.

In the preceding 232 pages, Winchester skims a fascinating array of relevant subjects that should appeal to any reader of eclectic interests: the evolution of the Dutch East India Company and its spice trade, Darwinism, the Wallace Line, continental drift, convection currents inside the Earth's mantle, plate tectonics, paleomagnetism, subduction zones, the development of underwater telegraph cables, evidence for Krakatoan eruptions in earlier centuries, and the observed paroxysms of the doomed island in the months, days, and hours before the final cataclysm. While many of the subjects may sound dry, the author's treatment of them isn't.

10:02 AM on August 27 went by in an instant. The pages following describe the series of ocean waves, the last over 100 feet high by the time it hit nearby coasts, that killed all but 1,000 of the 36,000+ who died in the calamity. After the waters subside and the ashes settle, Winchester closes with a discussion of the art inspired by years of glorious, dust-mediated, sunsets. And the re-emergence of a new volcanic island, Anak Krakatoa, on the site of the old, including the establishment of plant, insect and animal life on its barren, steaming surface.

The author bases his story on a multitude of scientific and historical sources, many of which involve eyewitness accounts of events. These, plus Winchester's dry humor, make for an engaging read. There's one chapter, however, which the book's editor should've advised tossing, i.e. the one unconvincingly postulating that the 1883 disaster sparked the revolt of the Islamic native population against their Christian Dutch overlords, which resulted in the latter being sent packing from Indonesia in 1949. Hmm. Perhaps it was just because the Dutch colonial administration wasn't warm and cuddly. You think? Also, though the volume is interspersed with useful photos and drawings, Winchester's own visit to Ana Krakatoa is visually unrepresented - a sorry lapse.

Ana Krakatoa translates as "Son of Krakatoa". The history of the island suggests it may also mean, "I'm back, and you'll be sorry!" Surfers at some future time may have another opportunity to catch a Monster Wave.