The bestselling author from the Professor and the Madman as well as the Map That Changed the World examines the enduring and world-changing ramifications of the catastrophic eruption off the coast of Java from the earth’s most dangerous volcano — Krakatoa.

The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa — the name has since become a byword for any cataclysmic devastation — was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly forty thousand people. Beyond the purely about Krakatoa physical horrors of a meeting that has only very recently been properly recognized, the eruption transformed the world in more methods than could possibly be imagined. Dust swirled round die planet for years, causing temperature ranges to plummet and sunsets to turn vivid with lurid and unsettling shows of light. The consequences of the huge waves were sensed as a long way away as France. Barometers in Bogotá and Washington, D.C., proceeded to go haywire. Bodies had been washed up in Zanzibar. The sound from the island’s destruction was heard in Australia and India and on islands thousands of kilometers away. Most crucial of all — in view of today’s new political weather — the eruption helped to cause in Java a influx of murderous anti-Western militancy among fundamentalist Muslims: among the 1st outbreaks of Islamic-inspired killings anywhere.

Simon Winchester’s lengthy experience in the world wandering aswell as his understanding of background and geology give us a completely new perspective on this exciting and iconic event as he brings it telling back to life.