Customer Reviews

Devastation! The World's Worst Natural Disasters

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Beautifully illustrated with color photos, this book vividly describes various catastrophic events that have occurred and continue to happen throughout the world. The events showing nature's often-horrific power include hurricanes, floods, volcanoes, fire, etc. Also discusses plagues, including AIDS, the Black Plague, as well as other diseases. Provides an international perspective on these events and discusses their causes, in addition to documenting their history and geographic areas where they occur. Includes a gazetteer pinpointing geographic locations of disaster areas. Will stimulate discussions about catastrophic events and will increase interest in geography by encouraging readers to locate the places where they occur. Good for school and public libraries. Ages middle school and up.

It is ironic that the publisher lauds this book as "expertly researched". Yet, I have never seen a book so rife with what are either typographical errors, plain misstatements of fact, erroneous map locations, and the like. I seriously wonder if anyone proofed this book before rushing it to publication.

For instance, the Soufriere volcano on Guadeloupe did NOT erupt in 1908 nor, obviously, did it kill 1,600 people that year. Hibok Hibok volcano is located in the Southern Philippines, NOT off the northern coast of Luzon. Many of the short narrative on Caribbean hurricanes are grossly in error. I could go on for quite some time, but you get the idea.

The color photographs are attractive, although, again, mislabeled all too frequently. The same would apply to the maps in the Gazeteer section of the book.

I cannot recommend this book for purchase, because there is simply too much misinformation in the contents. This is unfortunate, as the pictures are good. But many who would want this text would desire it for information on where they live, or intend to move or travel. This book would do those persons a disservice.

The thing that attracted me to this book was the blurb on the back cover: "Easy-to-follow explanations help you understand the underlying causes of all types of disaster, from volcanic eruptions and tornadoes to runaway fires and worldwide epidemics."

Alas, the easy-to-follow explanations never go deeper than the Sunday-supplement level, but 'Devastation!' is a very cheerful (if that adjective can be applied to disaster books), colorful, quick read with lots of photographs.

The latter part of 'Devastation!' is taken up with a gazetteer that divides the world (excluding the arctic and Antarctic) into eight maps, and plots over 500 disasters on the maps. One possible lesson to be gained is that people who want to die peacefully in bed should never live near the coast of anything. Of course, this clustering of dots is a bit of an optical illusion since interior disasters are harder to show as points on a map. These include tornadoes, plagues, droughts, famines, fires, and something the author calls 'space threats.'

The main part of the book is interesting, but arranged in a rather confusing fashion. For instance, the section on ice ages and mass extinctions, e.g. the Cretaceous Extinction, is preceded by "Avalanches and Landslides." These are all natural disasters, but there is a vast difference of scale. Another example of this uneasy combination of scale is a section misnamed "Patterns of Chaos" which combines the American Dust Bowl (1930s), Pleistocene Ice Epoch (1.65 million years ago to 10,000 years ago), Mississippi River floods (1993), Cretaceous Extinction (65 million years ago), North Sea flooding (1953), Cote d'Azur fires (1985), Gomeç avalanches (1992), Ethiopian drought and famine (1981 - 1985), Permian Extinction (250 million years ago), Yangtze River floods (1991), and the Australian Ash Wednesday fires (1983).

Chaos? Yes! Pattern? No!

"Devastation!" is a chaotically organized book, but easy and fun to read. You might at least want to find it in the oversized books section of your library and browse through the photographs.

When this was first published, I gave it a look and found it unsatisfactory. Clearly it was the kind of book that publishers come out with every few years; full of color pictures but short on text. Much like a chicken salad that has one small piece of chicken and a lot of shiny green salad. In any event, I received a copy as a gift shortly thereafter. It turned out much as expected. There is little in here most interested readers won't already know (earthquakes involve a violent shaking of the earth). The last chapter, on diseases, though, is a bit better. I have given this work three stars only because it does focus on geography, with every disaster pinpointed on the map, and an extensive gazetter section at the end. If recent surveys are correct, Americans, at least, need to learn all the geography they can