Winchester does a good job demosntrating the unimaginable scale and horror of the event. One particularly chilling passage recounts ships sighting literal rafts of pumice clogging the seas, floating across the Indian Ocean, complete with hundreds of skeletal human remains and household debris strewn across their surfaces.

The book falls short unfortunately in two key areas. First, though the disaster is well-described and documented, it also left me strangely unmoved and untouched. I found it difficult, if not impossible, to find myself involved or interested in any of the key figures of the age, partially because Winchester generally doesn't focus in on specific individuals or themes for lengthy periods of time and possibly because the geology lessons do tend to interrupt the flow of the narrative at times. Second, Winchester's attempt to link the eventual fall of the Dutch from power in Java and Indonesia with the devastation following the volcanic eruption seems...well, to be a bit of a reach. He notes the rise in radical Islamic activities in the years following Krakatoa and makes a basic case for cause-and-effect, it does not seem to be a particularly strong one and I for one, remain fairly unconvinced.

Overall, a strong and fascinating read.

For a look at Krakatoa today, check out these pictures, these ones and this site.

For more on volcanoes, check out Volcano World at the University of North Dakota, learn how they work here, and check out Pompeii, destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius here.

Learn more about plate tectonics here (courtesy of the US Geological Survey) and Alfred Russell Wallace (and his famous Wallace Line) here.

Learn how to make a Golden Volcano here...believe me, you will regret it. I did.

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