Customer Reviews

Ghosts of Vesuvius: A New Look at the Last Days of Pompeii, How Towers Fall, and Other Strange Connections

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I originally began reading this book out of a desire to find a thorough account of the exact events of the famous Vesuvius eruption in August 79 CE. I quickly realized that I had got more than I bargained for: along with a minute-by-minute report of those fatal 24 hours on the Bay of Naples, Charles Pellegrino provides a book that is equally a primer on the geological prehistory of the Earth and life on it; a melancholy meditation on some of history's most poignant what-ifs; a spiritual review of and an agnostic's indictment of the early (ugly) history of the Roman Catholic Church; a summary of the beliefs of Egyptian Gnosticism; and an impressionistic, rigorous account of the events of September 11 in New York City from the viewpoint of a volcanolgist-cum-paleontologist-cum-astrobiologist-cum-physicist-cum-ad infinitum. Along the way it becomes clear that Pellegrino has led one of the most interesting lives in recent memory; he name-drops a who's-who of the scientific community from Stephen Jay Gould to Stephen Hawking, and calmly recounts, in footnotes, such spectacular incidents as the time when he was nearly blown up with the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Does this sound exhausting? It is, but more importantly, it is fascinating. "Ghosts of Vesuvius" is one of the most engrossing books I have read in a long time. Though the narrative follows an associative rather than linear logic, Pellegrino manages, for the most part, to keep the connections he wishes to illuminate clear in his reader's mind. Herculaneum, Pompeii, and New York City are in the end far more alike than they are different, and Pellegrino's largest point comes through perfectly, though he never says it in so many words: our civilization may be ending. And it's our own damn fault.

Still, "Ghosts of Vesuvius" has flaws, some of them worth mentioning. At a stylistic level, Pellegrino loves ellipsis...far too much... He never learned, or doesn't care, that three dots is not an acceptable end to a sentence, let alone to a sentence fragment, and the ellipses become wearying. (As do his endless paragraphic, paranthetical remarks.) Furthermore, Pellegrino makes a few factual errors: the books of Lucretius were not burned by the Roman Church; they were in fact copied and recopied by monks. The upheaval in the Byzantine Empire of 537 CE (which Pellegrino contends was caused by a volcanic eruption in the Pacific) did not lead to that empire's 'downfall,' as that polity continued to exist, albeit never so gloriously, for another nine hundred years. Similarly, Pellegrino makes much of the fact that Marcus Tullius Cicero 'disappeared' in 43 BCE, when any competent classicist (or student of third-semester Latin) can tell you that Cicero was murdered by Mark Antony's goons on the Appian Way, and his head and hands were displayed on the Rostrum in the Forum as a warning to others who opposed Antony.

Yet these are minor quibbles. In the end, although Pellegrino's book provides a treasure trove on information on many more topics than the 79 CE Vesuvius eruption, it is far more an account of Pellegrino wrestling with the fact of September 11 than it is a work of nonfiction. Much as Bruce Springsteen did with "The Rising," and Art Spiegelman did with "In the Shadow of No Towers," Pellegrino stares into the abyss of humanity's nadir, and emerges with a flawed but brilliant masterpiece.

First of all let me say that I really learned a lot from this book. I had read some of the forensic information on the victims of Vesuvius in a journal article written in the 1980s and have often wondered what else had come of the work there. When I discovered Ghosts of Vesuvius by Charles Pellegrino, I felt I would at last learn a little more. I did indeed learn a great deal more but not all of it about Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Dr. Pellegrino is obviously a person of diverse interests and experience who has worked and corresponded professionally with researchers like Haraldur Sigurdsson (volcanology), Carl Sagan (cosmology), Issac Asimov (cosmology), Stephen Jay Gould (paleontology), Robert Ballard (marine science), Arthur C. Clarke (space engineer and astronomer), and Sara Bisel (forensic scientist). He also appears to be able to propound competently on both religion and philosophy and to speak knowledgeably about historical figures, events, politics, law and society. In short, he is an exceptionally well rounded individual. (E. O. Wilson would probably approve of his efforts towards consiliance).

The book is not probably for everyone, however, since it seems almost stream of consciousness in style. It took me a while to stand aside from the English Comp expectation that there be a beginning, middle and end with smooth transitions between concepts and a clear, up-front development of a central theme. I had the feeling that the author had a great deal to talk about and had decided to say it all in one book!

For those able to take information of various sorts and fit it into what they already know without necessarily needing a continuous thread, the author is a gold mine. Among other topics, he discusses the origin of the cosmos, the solar system, and the earth, the evolution of life, reveals our position in time by taking the reader backwards in leaps that double in length back to the big bang, discusses the mistakes and ambition of various Roman emperors and the development of Roman legal systems especially those regarding the rights of former slaves. He also discusses the effects of other volcanic events on the world, including that at Thera during the Minoan period and of Krakatoa during the 19th Century and analyzes the Old and New Testaments for indications of the psychological impacts of the AD 79 eruption on biblical stories. He outlines the various Gnostic sects of Christianity, their setting in the Roman world, and their beliefs vis a vis the Roman Catholic Church. He describes the historical background of the Vesuvian eruptions, points out the characteristics of what has become labeled a Plinian type of eruption, and describes some of the forensic data that provide insight into the human drama of the event. He narrates details of the 9/11 attack including the physics of the collapse of the buildings and of the odd pattern of survival of various individuals.

An excellent discourse, but suspend your English Comp notion of how a book should be written.

To the carpers below who have a difficult time reading a book whose scope extends beyond its beginning-point and title, the world is a complex place and always has been, and to limit those complexities and interconnectedness is unrealistically to reduce the scope of human understanding of how things work together. In fewer words, ----> :-P

More than almost any other author, Pellegrino has a sense of the diverse interconnectedness between and among events. Where other authors would take the less-complicated (and ultimately less-interesting) task of restricting their focus specifically to the events of AD 79, Pellegrino's vision stretches from Genesis to Apocalypse, from the big bang to the big crunch (or chill, as the case may be), from Pompeii and Herculaneum to the WTC and 9/11. The "connective tissue" linking these apparently dissimilar events is Pellegrino's discussion of force and change -- sometimes rapid and explosive change in the status of an apparently dormant volcano, and other times the change that this explosion wrought not only on the immediate surroundings, but on the story and progress of human civilization itself.

Pellegrino is a surprisingly accessible writer with the ability to have an almost binocular vision of events: one lens is focused on the vast expanse, the "big picture" of not only human history but the history of the cosmos, and the other lens is focused on the individual: Justa, Pliny the Younger, a young girl in the ashes holding not a valuable family idol, but a beloved doll to comfort her in the darkness. Never has this explosion come to life for me in this way; never has my understanding of the effects of a surge cloud or plate tectonics been so clear.

In short, the only carping in which I will engage is to say that to please the carpers, perhaps the book should have been given a different title beyond _Ghosts of Vesuvius_ -- maybe something that mentions how towers fall or the strange connections that can exist among apparently disparate events.

Oh, whoops. Guess it did already.

This book starts out a bit strange, but bear with it. The overall premise is that human life--and all life on earth--has been caused by forces beyond our control, and beyond our full comprehension: earthquakes, meteors, volcanoes, etc. Extinctions of animals, and extinctions of advanced civilzations, have been caused by these same forces. But Pellegrino, an agnostic, stops just short of calling these "acts of God". He wants to, but.... he defines agnostic in the original sense, as "one who does not know". Throughout the book, however, he seems to be in search of God, in search of the ground truth (from archeology, geology, etc.) about the books of both the standard Bible and the Gnostic gospels. If you've ever been fascinated by Discovery Channel/History Channel/PBS shows on the extinctions of the dinosaurs, Bible archeology, or volcanoes, this book is for you. (Plus life during the Roman Empire, some general ancient history, the history of the early Christian church, evolution, 20th century politics, and the Titanic--how many topics can you cram into one almost stream-of-consciousness book??) Major volcanic events throughout history are compared on a scale of kilotons and megatons, with comparisons to the Hiroshima bomb and the Twin Towers' collapse, showing that "acts of God" (or natural forces, if you're Pellegrino) are far more powerful than mere humans can ever devise. The book ends with Pellegrino applying his knowledge of volcanic surges and volcanic collapse columns to the Twin Towers' collapse. After taking you through the essential physics of such things in the Pompeii and Herculaneum excavations, he then applies these principles to NYC... and then reminds you that the collapse of the Twin Towers was far less powerful than Vesuvius, which was in turn miniscule in comparison with the Thera (Santorini) eruption that ended the Minoan civilization. I'm hooked; now I've ordered Pellegrino's "Unearthing Atlantis".

I've read a number of Pellegrino's books and so I was excited to see that a new one was available. Pellegrino is an author who can combine history, paleontology, archaeology, geology, volcanology, religion and philosophy into a single coherent narrative. I am constantly impressed by his ability to communicate a broad range of seemingly unrelated facts.

The book centers on excavations that have been going on for centuries in Pompeii and Herculaneum. While anyone with a basic grasp of Roman history knows about Vesuvius' eruption, more and more about these sites is being understood each year. Pellegrino focuses on the picture that is coming into to focus about how *modern* Roman life looked two millenia ago. He also shares stunning new discoveries about how the Romans perished in the horrors of AD 79.

There's other material here, though, and it makes for a compelling read. I didn't expect much new in Chapter Three, which is a timeline of the planet's history (something he's written about before), but Pellegrino offers a fascinating narrative about how horrific disasters have shaped our world.

I'm afraid that his discussion of Gnosticism in the early Christian church seemed a tad directionless. As a self-professed agnostic, he really doesn't seem clear on what he wants to *do* with this material.

The book closes with a powerful discussion of his work analyzing the aftermath of 9-11 at Ground Zero. While he tells us that the collapse of the WTC towers was only a minute fraction of the devastation of the Vesuvius eruption, the horrors parallel each other in disquieting ways.

This isn't a comfortable book to read, but it's deeply fascinating.

[Review of Hardcover edition]

This is a tremendously interesting and engrossing book, on many different levels. "GoV", contrary to what the title might lead one to suspect, is NOT just a book about Mt. Vesuvius - it's a tour de force exploration of the effect of volcanic forces on people, on civilizations, on religion(s), on species and evolution in general, on the landscape, and even on the very formation of life itself ... and the author draws upon a wide array of scientific disciplines in order to tell the tale effectively.

In similar fashion to Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe", the book opens with a bang ... or more specifically, with the origins of the universe, the formation of heavier elements in the hearts of stars, the evolution of solid matter (planets, asteroids and dark matter), the formation of volcanoes on those planets, and the role that volcanic forces play in the formation of life. From there, the author gives the reader an introductory taste of some of the possible connective threads between volcanic calamities of recent millennia, their appearances in (and possible influence on) religious accounts & beliefs, and how the tripartite aspects of creation, destruction, and preservation directly mimic the aspects of certain deities recurring throughout human history in various different religions ... a theme touched on indirectly by Fritjof Capra's Hindu-slanted poetic paradigm for viewing physical reality "The Tao of Physics".

From there, the authors pauses (in Chapter 3, "The Time Gate") to neatly tie together a broad range of different fields of human study into a single and innovatively coherent view of time. In it, the author telescopes backwards, in accelerating fashion, as he zooms further and further outwards - from recent history, through archeology (deep history), past paleontology (biological history), past geology (planetary history), and onward into astrophysics (stellar history) ... with major volcanic events as the connective thread every step of the way. A larger and more robust treatment of this material is also covered in a stand-alone novel entitled "Time Gate".

Next, the author reels the reader's time focus back in closer to home again, and delves into the heart of the book, and the author's chief love: archeology. In this case, the primary focus are the twin cities destroyed by Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD: Pompeii and Herculaneum. The author treats us to a veritable smorgasbord of some of the written accounts dating near, relating to, or directly affected by the eruption:

* Historical accounts (ex: the Plinys, Democritus, Josephus, Spartacus the Gladiator, etc),
* Biblical references (ex: the Council of Nicea that originally collated, edited and winnowed down the scattered accounts of the time into "The Bible" as we know it today),
* Legal records (ex: the legal case of the ex-slave Justa who was suing to retain her freedom at the time of the eruption) recovered from the carbonized remains of a large cache of library scrolls.

Reading those accounts drives home in dramatic fashion the terrible and lasting impact Vesuvius had on both the personal lives of the people nearby, on the surrounding nations and empires, and on the bible itself ... effects that are being felt even today, in ways that we're only just now beginning to understand.

From classic archeology, the author then re-focuses closer still into the subtle nuances and intimate details offered by forensic science, and the oh-so-human stories that the latter is allowing to emerge from the archeological strata. The bones can literally speak to us now ... telling us their exact age & gender, their most likely profession and social status, their dietary habits, wounds and diseases they suffered from, and so much more ... details that truly reinforce that archeology is not just about biology or dead civilizations - it's also about individuals.

It was shortly after the author finished writing the draft of this book that history and fate played a cruel joke ... on September 11th, 2001, hijackers crashed two passenger jets into the Word Trade Center in New York City. The buildings subsequently imploded and down blasted into the Manhattan Bedrock, and massive debris clouds radiated throughout southern Manhattan, burying, damaging and destroying much in it's path. The resemblance to Pompeii and Herculaneum was uncanny ... and that brings us to Chapter 10, the final chapter of GoV, in which several archeologists (including the author) converge on NYC to study the still-fresh archeological record.

Central to Chapter 10 is the story of NYFD Ladder 4 that emerged from the archeological evidence, and subsequent attempts (by certain unscrupulous people) to censor/delay/suppress the publication of this very book for daring to tell the truth ... a truth that exposed an earlier journalistic claim (of looting) as a slanderous hoax. For the details on that matter, I refer interested readers to the author's official discussion forum, which contains a thread on that subject, with additional information by the author.

To conclude, GOV is a must-read for anyone who's interested in the sciences in general, in history (both real and biblical), and in the ongoing efforts by determined researchers to carry forward the bright torch of knowledge & truth across the dark wastelands of time, superstition, ignorance ... and sometimes across the barbed wire boundaries of 'accepted theory', through toxic pools of opportunistic lies, and through suffocating clouds of censorship.

To quote Dr. Pellegrino: "History [and Truth] will eventually have it's way ... it always does."

I enjoyed it immensely, and I was engrossed throughout, from cover to cover.

I'd also like to compliment the author for his steadfast commitment to "Keep faith with the dead", regardless of the risk to his career as a published author. I've seen some of the consequences of that decision, first hand.

People who like their reading clear, concise and organized will probably hate this book. To someone like me, who is decidedly "right-brained," it was a joy to read, even though there were times when I put it aside because I just couldn't cope with the sheer amount of information.

Charles Pellegrino, who has also explored the wreck of the Titanic and the island of Thera (whose devastation in a volcanic eruption is a possible inspiration for the story of Atlantis), here brings his expertise to the results of the first-century eruption of Mt. Vesuvius as well as the collapse of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. "The behavior of dust-heavy air in Manhattan was governed by the very same physics that sent volcanic death clouds crashing...upon the cities of Vesuvius in A.D. 79," he writes, and the book which would have resulted from this simple comparison would probably have been equally fascinating, although much shorter and more focused.

Instead, Pellegrino gives us an extended meditation on catastrophes, human reactions to them and the impermanence of civilizations that is truly breathtaking in its scope, yet also shines a spotlight on intimate human moments and the personal reactions of the author, all the more poignant in the case of 9/11, where he lost people he knew. The bulk of the book is devoted to recent discoveries at Vesuvius, however. Pellegrino's reconstruction of the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, based on what science knows about the physics of it, eyewitness accounts from authors such as Pliny the Younger, and archaeological evidence, is riveting. He also builds up a context in which to place them, a context of slave revolts, religious ferment and amazingly advanced technology, which help to bring the people whose stories he tells to life.

This book probably could have been more tightly edited without losing its stream-of-consciousness feel, and Pellegrino's assertions were sometimes hyperbolic and occasionally flat-out wrong (the Pharisees were not a "sect of Temple high priests," but in general non-priests who were often in opposition to the Temple cult), but I still found it enjoyable and well-worth reading.

If this book had a coherent topic I might have enjoyed it. It doesn't. It is supposedly about the explosion of Vesuvius in A.D. 79, the destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and the social and cultural disruptions that followed. For reasons that are quite obscure the author rambles on for the first 127 pages about the origins of the universe, the origins of life, evolution, the appearance of the Big Dipper, panspermia, and more or less everything in between. Why? Who knows? Not me, and I read the book. He then prattles on about the slave revolt of Spartacus, which is at best tangentially relevant - but I guess he has a sense of humor, this chapter is called "Then listen, Josephus, for I digress"- never a truer word. The sections on Vesuvius are gripping and follow a coherent narrative line, until Pellegrino wanders off into yet another massive digression in a disjointed discussion of Gnosticism in the early church. I think the point was that the apocalyptic vision of early Christianity owed its origins to the calamitous explosion of Vesuvius, which is ingenious but he doesn't get even close to proving it, if only because nowhere are his arguments stated, it is all implication, imprecation and hand waving. We are then hurled through time to the sinking of the Titanic, an event that has nothing to do with Vesuvius, the Roman Empire, or volcanoes. The single point of comparison is the loss of life, and nothing in the Titanic chapters serves this book in any way whatsoever; pointless verbiage. Pellegrino then sets off on a gratuitous discussion of the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York. The only link to Vesuvius that Pellegrino could muster was the shared physics of the collapse column in both a volcanic cloud and a falling building. I'd call that a stretch. Perhaps a more valid comparison would have been to talk to survivors of the atom bombs in Japan. Surprisingly, given that the book is about a volcanic explosion, there is no discussion of volcanic events in recent times- Krakatoa, Mount St. Helens, Etna. It is not even clear from the book that Vesuvius is still active, or that the Bay of Naples has been devastated by earthquakes in living memory. This is just lazy. There are errors of fact; a message in a bottle thrown into the Atlantic seems to have washed up in Surrey, England, which is not a small feat since Surrey is a landlocked county with not an inch of shoreline (perhaps it floated up the river Thames?). Pellegrino appears to place the fall of Constantinople to around 535, which is nonsense. This is in the middle of the reign of Justinian I (527-565), who expanded the Byzantine Empire to include all the Mediterranean including Southern Spain, and who between 532 and 537 oversaw the building of the Sancta Sophia- one of the greatest churches ever constructed. These are hardly the signs of a dieing civilization. With inevitable ups and downs Constantinople remained the centre of a major Christian civilization until it fell to the Turks in 1453, whereupon it became the centre of a major Muslim civilization. Finally, the style is clumsy with the same phrase frequently repeated in the same sentence, as in, (just one example of many) "her first officer had (in a manner of speaking) given me a promise to keep and pointed me (in a manner of speaking) toward..." It could have been a good book, it isn't.

This book is a rambling, incoherent, stream-of-conciousness mess.

I bought this book to read about the "last days of Pompeii". While about 20% of the book does describe the last days of Pompeii (and much of that is just repitition of the oft-told Pliny letters), the bulk of the book rambles on about the following topics, and many others:

--a reverse-chronological summary history of the earth back to 8 BILLION BC, accompanied by sketches of what the Big Dipper would have looked like at various points between now and 8 billion years ago;
--the mating habits of North American and European eels;
--recovery efforts on the Titanic;
--remembrances of 9/11 and recollections of various firemen, etc. who survived the collapsing towers;
--the controversial James ossuary;
--the moons of Jupiter;
--the Gnostic Gospels; and
--reported discoveries of Roman ships off the Brazilian and Venezeulan coasts.

While any of these topics might be interesting enough if presented properly, most of them (other than maybe the 9/11 materials) are pretty much irrelevant to Pompeii, the purported topic of the book. Moreover, the various topics are presented in a kaleidoscopic, stream-of-conciousness manner without any apparent organizational principle. In short, this book consists of about 100 pages of information regarding Pompeii crammed into 450 pages.

Something about the title of this book caught my eye, and I have barely put it down since. What could Pompeii, the wreck of the Titanic, early Christianity, and the fall of the towers of the World Trade Center possibly have in common? The dynamics of disaster, the currents and eddys in destructive forces, and how little human nature has changed in two thousand years are all tied together with the eye of a scientist in this book. It rambles at times, and it suffers from poor illustrations that detract from the point they are trying to make, and those things make me rate it less than a perfect 5. But there is compelling information in reading first person observations of the destruction of 79 AD and 2001 AD. The profound influence of Pompeii's destruction on the foundation of Christianity makes you wonder how the events of 9/11/2001 will ripple into the future. And how much they have already changed us, as Vesuvius changed the Roman Empire. This is certainly a book that will make you think, and it's not for the squeamish. The multi-layered narrative gets a bit tough to connect at times. But reading about how the WTC changed the way archeologists view "hallowed ground" make it worth the effort. There are images in this book that will haunt you - red roses, two dolls, a law library on a fire escape, bodies in a seaside shack, the story of a slave girl, Company 40 and Ten House. Those are worth buying the book alone.