Customer Reviews

Supervolcano

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I teach college-level science, including a course on volcanoes. I must say that this is one of the most poorly-written science books that I have ever read. This book looks like a vanity-press product that has undergone essentially no editing. Interestingly, one of the specialities of the publisher is paranormal phenomena. To be sure, there is interesting content in the book if one can sift it out. There are many errors of grammar, punctuation (way too many commas!), and spelling; they even misspelled the name of noted volcanologist Haraldur Sigurdsson! The writing style is extremely wordy with much redundancy (annoying strings of alternate descriptions or synonyms for well-known terms or concepts, repetitions of catch phrases) and clumsy sentence construction. After a while I found myself so annoyed at the writing that it was difficult to focus on the science content. Another major annoyance is the authors' method of "citation" of sources, listing date, article title, periodical name, authors' names, and authors' affiliations right in the text; surely, use of footnotes or a standard citation style would have been a much better way to cite source material without breaking up the flow of the narrative so much. As another reviewer noted, many of the sources mentioned in the text are not scientific research journals, but rather popular media, web sites, and television programs. A rather long discussion simply summarized a PBS television program about supervolcanoes. The production values of this book are also very amateurish. A cheesy "explosion" font is used for chapter titles; likewise, an "LED" font is used for section headings and page numbers. Diagrams are all taken from other sources and are in many cases reproduced at too small a size to see details. Furthermore, the captions for the illustrations are all printed over a silly "graph-paper" background that serves only to reduce their legibility. As other reviewers have noted, chapter 8 should have been omitted. All in all, this book was a major disappointment.

This book is the first well-researched, well-written volume I have seen on supervolcanoes, i.e., resurgent ash-flow calderas. These monsters do not make conical mountains, but scatter ash and other pyroclastic debris over thousand of square kilometers, change climate and incoming solar radiation, and can wipe out species and civilizations in an instant.

The present book discusses these phenomena as well as recent large scale eruptions in the near past, such as Thera, Crater Lake, and Tambora, for purposes of comparison. This is necessary, inasmuch as record-keeping people have been fortunate enough never to experience a true supereruption. It does appear that mankind was nearly driven to extinction by the Toba supervolcanic eruption in 74,000 B.P., however, and much of the book is laudably devoted to an excellent collection of information on this event, and what its repetition, either at Toba or elsewhere, would portend for our civilization. The news is far from encouraging.

My only complaint about the book is the poor reproduction of the black and white photographs. Much important detail that would have greatly aided the written presentation is just simply missing or greatly disotrted. There are no color photographs.

However, the written presentation is superb. The book is filled with interesting details that follow well as a unit. Especially apt is the notation that the largest ash flow caldera known, La Garita, is located in Colorado. FORTUNATELY, that one is extinct.

The book closes worth a narrative of a hypothetical supereruption of Californi's active Long Valley Caldera in 2015, which largely destroys the Southwest and ruins agriculture in the Great Plains.
The supereruption is comparively small on the scale of such things, but still wipes out the U.S. as a global power.

As the authors correctly observe, the odds of a supervolcano erupting in any given year, or even in our lifetime are quite small, so it doesn't pay to stay up worrying about them doing so. Since such a happening COULD occur, and could not be stopped or modified, such places as Yellowstone, Long Valley, Valles in New Mexio, and Taupo in New zealand should be zealously monitored to minimize effects where possible.

Any volcano buff should definitely get this book and put in a distinct place in his or her library. Highly recommended.

When I saw this book advertised here on Amazon, it seemed like the kind of book I enjoy reading, so I ordered a copy. At first glance, this book seems a little lightweight. It is full of pictures, diagrams and scary-looking fonts of the type that tend to fill the pages of speculative books. In addition, although the author is a geophysicist with a Ph.D. he seems to refer to more articles in popular publications such as USA Today and Readers' Digest and abstracts of papers than you would expect of an expert in the field. These limitations aside, the book is actually an interesting read and seems to reflect pretty solid science in most cases. It includes an interesting history of volcanoes and supervolcanoes and the impacts they have had as well as special coverage of the main topic of the book, the Toba supervolcano that created an evolutionary bottleneck about 70,000 years ago. There are interesting references to some of the latest discoveries and developments in a number of fields and fairly even-handed coverage of topics that are still somewhat controversial such as the cause of prior mass extinctions and the so-called KT impact event. There is only one chapter that is very strange. In chapter 8, the author delves into the highly speculative idea of cellular memory, or the suggestion that memories of traumatic events can be stored at the cellular level outside of the brain and thus be passed on. Beside the fact that this is a very controversial area of inquiry, he fails to adequately explain why he even brings up the topic. In addition to the physical effects of a supervolcanic eruption, the author seems to be highly interested in the psychological effects. The book ends with a fictional scenario for an eruption of the Long Valley Caldera after a large earthquake in southern California, and a discussion of what preparations can and should be made in anticipation of any volcanic eruption. Overall, the threat of a supervolcano eruption seems very small, and in that sense, the book seems to be tapping into currently popular doomsday scenarios. However, the parts of the book that deal with basic background information and the historical precedents are interesting and fairly well-written. They are compact and easy to read.

SUPERVOLCANO - The CATASTOPHIC Event That Changed the Course OF Human History. by John Savino & Marie Jones. New Page, '07
review by Micheal Sunanda. Pt 1,

I lived on Kilauea volcano a decade seeing red hot lava flowing into the sea there & hiked into its dormant crater 3 times, both very exciting & studying volcanoes first hand. I head the authors on Coast to Coastam talk show, so charming i got the book. Finally a new in-deep earth science geology book about monster volcanoes expanding our awareness of Cataclysmic Evolution now with many smaller earth changes happening simultaneously. Volcanoes are earth's most suddenly creative hot explosive scary event & place making land, gases & ash blowing far & near, even causing mass extinction in history of earth's evolution. The authors compare big eruptions of last 50 years, are small compared to Toba supervolcano' in Sumatra, Indonesia 75K years ago, They use Toba & Mt St Helens radically contrasting the global shock waves of past & possible coming supervolcano eruption. SV explains many kinds of big & super-volcanoes.
This very readable, dramatic, comprehensive? & scientific text has some charts & B/W illustrations: showing craters, fault-lines, destruction, trends & 6 types of volcanoes: flood or plateau, shield V; cinder cone, composite or strato V; V cone & caldera". Also under sea V & fault-line eruptions. They present a new theory of evolution `the BOTTLECK' - explaining how human life was nearly erased & few survived on earth after Toba Supervolcano. Also other extinctions were caused by super-volcanoes, that could happen again?!

This book is a collaboration between a credentialled scientist (Savino) and a pop science author (Jones) and the text of the book is definitely divided into two distinct writing styles. The book begins with a meandering explanation of volcanoes and their effects with many tangents into unrelated matters interspersed with jargon filled scientific explanations. Neither of the authors seem to have made any real effort to reach a middle ground and my main criticism of the book is that, as a book on supervolcanoes, it spends an inordinate amount of time exploring material unrelated to vulcanism.

The second major criticism is the fringe science. There is an entire chapter on cellular memory and racial post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) hidden under the title of Evolutionary Psychology. While there is some evidence for the phenomenon, it is A) fringe science not widely accepted by the mainstream community and B) tenuously related to the subject matter & title of the book. The entire two chapters are a waste of space.

Thirdly, the scientific research & references contained in the book are well cited but many of the books statements are drawn from references to television documentaries, non-peer reviewed websites and fringe science books. For the lay person, this means that the book lacks a strong focus on information and for the scientist, it grates as you are constantly bombarded with factoids which do not display scientific rigour.

Overall, the book feels like it was mostly written by a non-scientist (Jones) and that the scientist (Savino) was contracted to write small portions of the book and to lend his doctorate to the title page. I would NOT recommend this book to anyone wanting to understand volcanoes as there is no middle ground between Savino's science and Jones' mysticism.

I love volcanoes. This is a cautionary tale. Scientists are finding more Supervolcanoes than ever thought existed. This book is well written and gives the reader a scary look at what a supervolcano can do. When this one erupted about 75,000 years ago, the eruption nearly wiped out the human race. Toba is sited on the island of Sumatra, famous for the 2004 tsunami.

The author has done his research and the narrative is smooth and cohesive. I have this book in my science library where it has a prominent place. I learned many new things and I am delighted to have this book. Thank you for a great and enjoyable book.

Interesting. Informative. Good read. Learn geology. There are hundreds of supervolcanoes worldwide. This book is about Toba. The last eruption almost wiped out the human race 75,000 years ago.

Sara Howard, Author of "Something Funny Happened on The Way to The Moon" and "The Biggest Explosions in The Universe".

So much for Uniformitarianism! It now seems certain our history is tied to Earth history, and that cataclysm has been a significant force! Although science takes a lead role in the narrative Supervolcano is not your ordinary science book. It blends history, genetics, geology, and ancient myth, and tells the story of an event - the Toba eruption -around 70,000 years ago that changed the world and helped create what and who we are today.

As a habitual reader of science books, most of which are directed at a scientific oriented audience, I must say this book is one of the best. Jones and Savino make reading science (and history) a pleasure.

For anyone interested in volcanoes or the origins of mankind Supervolcano is a must read. I also urge the authors that their next book should be about the catastrophic events that caused mass extinction at the end of the Ice Age.

I was fascinated with earth science ever since my first encounter with it, especially when I had a class in it before HIgh School.
This is a great book! Chock full of fun information as well as necessary info (without being alarmist).
I really enjoyed reading it, and so I highly recommend it.

I enjoyed reading this book overall, as I find the subject very interesting, but it would have benefited greatly from a good editor. The numerous typos and grammar errors were distracting and sometimes confusing. (For example, the book says "foul" instead of "fowl" and "heals" instead of "heels," and there's one particularly amusing bit in the first sentence of Chapter 9 where the world "million" was omitted so that Ashfall Fossil Beds Historical Park was buried in ash "between 10 and 12 years ago." Funny, I don't remember that...)
In addition to textual errors, the layout and formatting left something to be desired. Chapter headings were in a cheesy "exploding" font. Image captions were printed over a graph paper background that made them difficult to read, and some of the maps and diagrams suffered from being re-sized and made grayscale.


Formatting issues aside, I did enjoy reading the book. I would have liked a bit more detail about what human beings were like 75,000 years ago, but overall the information about supervolcanoes was interesting. If you're just interested in volcanoes and want to read about the biggest and baddest of them all (and can handle some scientific jargon, as some of the language can get quite technical in places), this is a fun read. If you're looking for a highly scholarly work that cites only academic journals whose names are too long to fit in a Twitter post, it's probably not the best pick.

I chose to read this book for my geology class because it seemed like it'd be a good read. As a whole, it was pretty informative about how volcanoes work and the history of both well-known volcanoes and supervolcanoes. On the other hand, it was poorly organized and it kept on jumping back and forth on various topics in the same chapter, thus scattering bits and pieces throughout the book. It became pretty frustrating to read through what I thought were pages of irrelevant ramblings of things that had little to do with Toba.

As a previous reviewer stated, there was a whole, odd chapter on celluar memory while there were a few pages actually focusing on Toba. I could've done without the "out there" speculations that how we are today psychologically and physiologically came from the traumatic eruption of Toba that our ancestors faced. It was slightly interesting to read about these theories, but again, I felt that all that was incidental to the topic of Toba (and other supervolcanoes).

Perhaps the author/publisher should re-release this book with an accurate backcover summary of what its actually about and not mislead the readers into thinking otherwise.

If you're looking for in-depth details regarding supervolcanoes such as Toba,the Long Valley, and Yellowstone calderas, look elsewhere.

If you're looking for a casual read, then this book is just for you.