Customer Reviews

Volcanoes of the World: A Regional Directory, Gazetteer, and Chronology of Volcanism During the Last 10,000 Years

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This book is one of a kind. I don't understand how anyone who likes volcanoes and volcanic phenomena could not go wild with this book.

The book gives the location and height of each of the 1,511 volcanoes known to have been active in the last 10,000 years. A few more have been discovered since the 1993 publication date, but this defect can be easily remedied by recourse to the GVP link on the Net. More importantly, each known eruption is described by date, duration and explosive power. Also, each eruption of each mountain, no matter how many, has its chief characteristics set out, including type of eruption and fatalities and damage, if any.

The book contains copious footnotes for the serious reader and a thorough general discussion at the start. Interesting black and white photos and drawing are occasionally found as well. The total accumulation of presented data is immense. However, anyone with a moderate scientific background will not be overwhelmed.

Residents of the Western U.S. and Canada should read the history of these regions with particular care, since the book shows eruptive patterns and locations of many underpublicized volcanic areas with great precision. This enables informed decision-making in the event of the next activity of any of these features.

The only parallel I can find in any other book is The Baseball Encyclopedia. If you want to know anything about a given volcano, it's probably here. For the interested reader in geology, it is essential, and for the volcano "geek", it is Nirvana. I've had it for over three years and I still peruse it regularly.

VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!

Given the high price of this book, I borrowed and read the 1981 edition from the library. I realize that the one here is 13 years newer, although it is also 16 years old as of this writing. By the way, I am not a geologist or volcanologist - just a regular person interested in science and understanding of natural phenomena.

The intro, or the first 20 pages or so, are relatively interesting reading although for the most part they just explain how the data in the rest of the book is laid out. The rest of the book (majority) is taken up by dense lists and tables of data, which is very dry reading, to put it mildly. Having maps as well as statistical tables for various properties of volcanoes in a given region would have made this a much more interesting and digestible book, but alas this wasn't the case.

The data in my edition was only up to 1980. At least it covers Mt Saint Helens :) Yellowstone is considered a geyser causing volcano instead of a supervolcano. There are no known VEI 8 eruptions mentioned. Clearly, the level of scientific thinking was not as developed as it is today. Perhaps the 1994 edition fares better, although it seems that some of the supercaldera thinking dates from around 2000.

In sum, I found the book uninteresting. I won't give it less than 3 stars though, since there is nothing really wrong with the book.

Unless you are a volcanologist, I see no reason to buy this book. Even if you are a volcanologist, there must be more up to date sources than this.