Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World

bought as gift for non geologist volcano buff

If you want to learn about the impact of a major volcanic eruption, this is the book to read. Tambora's eruption had implications across the globe with both direct and indirect impacts. Point in hand, it played a major role in Thomas Jefferson's financial issues that resulted in his family having to sell his Monticello estate.

A small irony occurred the day Gillen D’Arcy Wood’s new definitive history of the Tamboran period arrived by post. On that day I had expected to be standing on the summit of Gunung Tambora.Tambora is a fertile area for his Wood’s research into the relationships between societies and the environment. During the five year journey of the writing of his book he was able to uncover historical information from across the world and connect them, in a way no one had done before, to the calamitous events on Sumbawa in 1815. I had contacted Wood when I first heard about his new book and he was enthusiastic and encouraging to hear of another writer interested in the mountain, saying that he hoped large numbers of articles, books and papers would soon be forthcoming as the world woke up to the importance of the eruption.Professor Wood has become a champion of Tambora and he enters the battle with her favour tied firmly to his lance of research. He feels the eruptions of Vesuvius, Krakatau and others are unfairly more famous. Tambora’s eruption, he claims, was a “world-historical event” more akin to that of Thera on the Greek island of Santorini in 1628 BC, which is easily linked to the decline of the Minoan civilisation and to events retold in the Bible, such as the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. You get the impression that Tambora’s relative exclusion to modern history is affronting to him, and his new book is an attempt to make things right. On this he didn’t need to convince me – I had already come to the same conclusion.Gillen is the first to have translated some Chinese poetry of the time which acts as a record of the famines and privations that people faced there. Also his research into the typhus epidemic in Ireland, the Northwest Passage race and Benjamin Franklin’s trials and tribulations and how they directly relate to Tambora is as fascinating as it is wide reaching.Reading his book I quickly found that Wood has been able to uncover what I so far had not. He had met Sumbawans who could tell stories of Tambora and the zaman hujan au (time of the ash rain). One story he retells is of a Tamboran king who apparantly ruled the island from a palace of gold. These days the ghost of the king still guards the treasure, now buried under pyroclastic flows. The ghost is embittered and twisted and seeking revenge. He and the beautiful spirit of his daughter are said to entice careless young men into the forest with the promise of riches and bliss and, they say, many have never been seen again.I had been asking every Sumbawan I had met for this sort of tale, perhaps a shared “memory” of the event, but was yet to find anyone who could help me. But as Wood had met people in the know I resolved to re-double my efforts on my return to seek other stories like this one. My own book “Tambora: journeys to Sumbawa and the mountain that changed the world” should be released later in 2014.I recommend Wood’s well researched and easily read book about this important mountain as a valuable addition to the literature on the history and science of Tambora.[...]

I almost didn’t get past the first chapter of this book. The first chapter was extremely repetitive and the author did a huge history writing irk of mine. He repeatedly mentions what will be covered in future chapters. This is usually a huge red flag that a history book is going to be a rough and questionable read. However, after that first chapter the book gets quite interesting and is well paced and written. If you don’t like the first chapter, power through and you’ll enjoy the book.

In a political climate where a prominent U.S. Senator can bring a snowball onto the Senate floor as proof that "global warming is a hoax," we need all the information on climate change that we can get and digest. "Tambora" focuses on the global impacts of a catastrophic volcanic eruption in Indonesia in 1815 -- impacts that included the infamous "year without a summer" in much of Europe and in New England. Much of what is recounted here has been known for a long time, but that doesn't mean it has been widely appreciated. I have taught about short-term weather anomalies triggered by vulcanism (including, of course, Tambora) since 1973. In all those years I have rarely encountered a University of California undergraduate with prior exposure to the topic--the exception was in 1991-92, when there was widespread publicity about the Pinatubo eruption, and we were treated to a combination of bizarrely-colored skies and a lack of snow in the Sierra Nevada. To the extent this book helps to sensitize the public to the lability of the climatic system, it is a useful addition to the literature.The author, d'Arcy Wood, is a humanist. Although he has done his homework fairly well, he clearly does not have an in-depth understanding of climatological mechanism, and his attempts to tie socioeconomic consequences to the Tambora event all too often falter because it is difficult to connect the proverbial dots. Popular expositions of the human consequences of climate written by non-climatologists that do this better are "A Vast Machine" by Paul N. Edwards, "The Winds of Change" by Eugene Linden, and the granddaddy of them all, "Times of Feast, Times of Famine," by the great French historian Emmanuel Leroy Ladurie. A couple of excellent ones by geoscientists are "Why Geology Matters," by Doug MacDougall, and "the Two-Mile Time Machine," by Richard B. Alley--and of course the classic "Climatic History and the Future," by Hubert H. Lamb. If you're going to read only one from this list, read "The Winds of Change." But "Tambora" ain't bad.

As with Laki in Iceland in the 1770's Tambora's huge eruption in 1815 had widespread effects on the world's weather, triggering famine, disease and economic disaster, coming as it did shortly after the disorganisation caused by the Napoleonic Wars,. `The year without a summer' it was called in the USA and the `Year of rain' in much of Europe. This book's detailed account of all the interdependent effects is very readable. Generally there is little warning of such catastrophic eruptions, and there have been even bigger ones before historical times. Of course it makes one wonder what would be the effect of a similar eruption today on the modern world's much more complex systems, and if any preparations have been made for such an event..

1816 and the creation of Frankenstein is satisfactorily touched on in D'Arcy Wood's very comprehensive study of the consequences of the Tambora eruption in the previous year. In its sweep and detail based on masterly research this is an excellent contribution to our knowledge. My sole complaint is that the effect on Russia and Russian peasantry, particularly in the form of the scourge of cholera, could havebeen more fully examined, leading, possibly, to the pandemic that may have been illustrated most obviously in literary terms in Gogol's masterpiece 'Dead Souls'. In a Russian CXIX context literature not only provided the most striking evidence of a monster akin to Mary Shelley's abroad in the land but also the most famous evidence, however monstrously comedic, of the effect of Tambora on the peasantry and the whole semi-feudal character of rural life..

Gillen DÁrcy Woods Tambora:The Eruption That Changed the World, Princeton University Press 2014 is an excellent multidisciplinary study of the devastating eruption of the Tamora vulcano 10th of April 1815 in Indonesia. It was the most powerful vulcano eruption ever recorded by man and the blast was heard far away - the legendary govenor Stamford Raffels thought a canon was fired. But the environmental effect was global in scale. Sulphur dioxide ejected up to the stratospher by the furious vulcano reacted with water to form aerosolized sulphuric acid that acted as a molecular screen over the planet by reflecting incoming sunlight, whereas longwave heat rays from earth passed through the screen, with a double cooling effect as the consequence. The environmental effect of the cooling climate, which lasted for three years, was extreme in the western world and asia. Crop yield plummeted by 75% 1816-17 in a europe devastated by Napoleonic wars. Famine spread and riots erupted in several cities. The Bologna prophecy of an Italian astronomer predicted that the many dark spots on the sun will grow until the sun will be extinguished and complete darkness prevail in the world. Apocalyptic sentiments and panic arose. People flocked to church in the thousands for prayers.The situation in Switzerland was desperate with an estimated increased mortality of ten thousand during the 3 years of Tamboras climatic effect. and with the twisted weather Frankenstorms and deluge rainfalls appeared and often out off season with further damage to agriculture.Lord Byron, the Shelley's and Polidori visited Switzerland in the cold and wet summer of 1816. In a stormy night with lightening the 16th of June Byron read ghost stories to his party at Villa Diodati and suggested that they should write their own stories for amusement. Mary Shelley composed Frankenstein, Polydori the Vampyre and Byron the poem Darkness. The wet and cold weather induced by Tambora also effected the glaciers in the Jura mountains. On Shelley's visit to Mer de Glace they heared cracking sounds of moving ice and avelanges - the glacier in fact expanded 50 meters in three years. The bad weather continued and Byron and Shelley ran the risk of perish in the waves of Lake Geneva on a sailing trip when an unusually strong storm hit them.The consequences of the Tambora eruption outside europe has not been described in previous books on the subject. The chapter of epidemic cholera outbreak promoted by an alteration of the monsun cycle in the Bengal bay is especially interesting to read.A number of books has been published on the eruption of the Tambora vulcano 1815, but this is definitely the best and most comprehensive - highly recommenable and easy to read.

I found out about this volcano whilst I was researching for my family tree and found it hard to believe that its eruption is not better know. It makes excellent reading.

It's not a bad book, it's just not great. It reads like the author had a very tightly written 120 pages and then padded it out to 234. I find myself skipping over too much of it.