Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World

by Gillen D'Arcy Wood

Tambora( The Eruption That Changed the World) Hardcover GillenD'ArcyWood PrincetonUniversityPress

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Environment, Geology, Nature, Geography

312 pages, Hardcover

First published April 27, 2014

About the author

Associate professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Reviews

[Susan Paxton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is quite the best book I've read all year. In Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World, Gillen D'Arcy Wood follows the model, probably unknowingly, of Geoffrey Parker's Global Crisis: Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century, albeit on a somewhat different scale; Parker wrote about the Little Ice Age, which ran for the better part of a century, and here Wood describes the Tambora eruption of 1815 and the ensuing climate disasters that followed for the next three or four years. As Parker plumbed deep into primary sources, so does Wood; from the writings of the Shelly/Byron set to a previously unknown poet in China to the financial troubles of farmer Thomas Jefferson, Wood pulls varied and many strands into a whole that gives a vivid, worldwide picture of a climate completely off the rails, leaving starvation, epidemic, and personal disaster in its wake. New scientific research contributes as well; recently it's been discovered that an unknown 1809 eruption or eruptions set the stage for the Tambora disaster. Fascinating personalities I definitely want to read more about pop in and out; this is a book of many pleasures. Would that its warning for our own time was not so grim.

[Jamie Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

The eruption of Mount Tambora on April 10th, 1815 was one of the most destructive events in recorded history, ejecting 38 cubic miles of material into the atmosphere, and causing catastrophic climatic disruptions around the world for three years. It caused floods and famines, tremendous storms, and set the stage for widespread human migrations and the epidemics that followed in their wake. It caused financial panic in the young United States, and atypical warming in parts of the Arctic, leading nations that dreamed of finding the fabled Northwest Passage to mount costly and ultimately futile expeditions. After three years of unseasonable rains and cold in some places, drought in others, and widespread failed harvests things looked very dire for large parts of the world, but finally, the ash and dust were washed out of the atmosphere and the next year produced a good harvest. Had there been one more bad year governments probably would have fallen in the wake of mass starvation.

The author has an engaging writing style that, combined with his extensive research on events, makes the book interesting even for readers with no particular interest in geology or climatology. The consequences of the eruption are not widely known today but were disastrous at the time, causing tens of thousands of deaths and fundamentally changing the course of history for some of the affected regions. I found the events in China particularly interesting. Not only did the famine that ensued cause mass starvation, it changed the society of the region, initiating a sequence of events that led farms to switch from traditional crops to opium, which had its own cascading consequences for the nation.

A recurring story within the book is the famous events at Lake Geneva involving Byron, Shelley, and the rest of the Romantic gang, cooped up because of constant bad weather, and deciding to write spooky stories to pass the time. Out of this seemingly trivial event came Frankenstein and the modern vampire genre.

The only thing about the book that gave me pause in some places was the little voice in my head that reminded me “correlation is not causation.” Most of the events cited in the book have a fairly clear cause and effect sequence with regard to the volcano, but some of them seemed like second or third order effects at best.

[[Name Redacted] · Rating 2 out of 5]

UPDATE #1: For a supposedly scientific and historical work, there is an awful lot of tut-tutting at people 200+ years ago for not acting on knowledge we didn't get till a couple decades ago... Also, a lot of huffing about the need for class warfare, and a surprising refusal to acknowledge the fact that "climate change" has been plateaued for the last ~20 years... I'm starting to think this book isn't about history or science.

UPDATE #2: Okay, i can do without the self-righteous 21st-century Marxist re-interpretations of Shelley, Byron, Bysshe-Shelley, etc. Also your attempts to "shame! SHAME!" aristos and "haves" from 200+ years ago? YOU ARE A WEALTHY, MIDDLE-AGED, WHITE MALE ENGLISH PROFESSOR!!! You're from Australia and a resident of the USA, and qualified to speak authoritatively on neither class struggle nor race nor history, and ESPECIALLY not on science!

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should have known I would not like this one. An English professor who holds the position of Associate Director at the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment. Not a scientist and not likely to take an unbiased view of climate. Slanted and disjointed. What this guy said: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
1 Star

[Steven Peterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The great volcanic eruption at Tambora in 1815 made Vesuvius look like a volcanic hiccup; it was many times stronger than the destructive Krakatoa. It was one of the most powerful volcanoes of which we have a record. This book looks at the many effects of this catastrophe--from economic to human misery to cultural effects--throughout the world.

From famine and immiseration in Ireland to depression in the United States (including Thomas Jefferson being pushed further and further into debt as crops failed and loans had to be sought), the aftereffects of the volcano were worldwide. This volume tells the story.

First, it describes the eruption itself. I wish that more detail were available on the leadup to and eruption of Tambora. But the observations and direct reports are not as abundant as with, for example, Krakatoa. However, the book does a fine job of telling us what happened thereafter--much material being ejected into the skies, with residues of the volcano circulating the globe for a handful of years. And the climate was affected greatly. Summer disappeared from some parts of the world. Crops failed in many locales. Temperatures decreased in large patches of the planet. Human misery in many places became the norm until things began to improve in 1818 in many places.

Effects? This book speaks of a variety: (a) cultural--the Shelleys and Byron in their writing used the impact (even though they knew nothing of Tambora itself, they were aware of dramatic climate changes), with Mary Shelley wri5ting "Frankenstein" and the others making their own contributions; (b) negative effects in Europe, such as Ireland; (c) dreadful results from Tambora in China and India; (d) changes in the Arctic area; (e) negative consequences in the United States.

Many effects were direct--loss of crops and consequent famine or shortages of foodstuffs.

The epilogue considers that, at one level, Tambora shows how natural phenomena can affect climate change--even if for a short period of time. At a different level, it suggests that human agency can be overwhelmed by natural phenomena.

[Ints · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nesen man bija saruna par vulkāniem, un izrādījās, ka par Tamboras izvirdumu sekām, atšķirībā no Krakatoa izvirduma, es neko jēdzīgu nezinu. Šo vēsturē autori mīl saukt par nenovērtēto un nepelnīti aizmirsto izvirdumu, kas neskatoties uz savu mērogu, tā arī īsti neguva slavu. Nolēmu labot caurumus savās zināšanās, un ātri atradis šo grāmatu, sāku lasīt.

Kad 1815. gadā kaut kur pie ekvatora gaisā uzgāja Tamboras vulkāns, neviens tam īsti nepievērsa uzmanību. Izņemot vietējos, kuriem tas nozīmēju tūlītēju nāvi piroklastiskajā plūsmā vai bada nāvi pēc pāris nedēļām. Eiropas lielvaras šim notikumam nepiedēvēja lielu nozīmi. Bet tas tā bija tikai līdz 1816. gada vasarai, kura tā arī nepienāca. Kad tas pats atkārtojās 1817. Gadā, cilvēki kļuva manāmi iztraukti. Šī grāmata pievēršas Tamboras vulkāna izvirduma seku sistematizācijai un analīzei.

Šis populārzinātniskais darbs ir laba liecība tam, kas notiek, kad autors labi orientējas kāda autora daiļradē, un šīs zināšanas varītēm mēģina iespīlēt vulkanoloģijas grāmatā. Pats par tevi tas nav nekas slikts, ja vien ar to pārāk neaizraujas. Ievadā autors pievēršas Mērijas Šellijas Frankenšteinam, un tas šķita tāds savdabīgs ievads, kas parāda erudīciju. Pirmā nodaļa ir veltīta pašam izvirdumam un šķita, ka būs laba lasāmviela. Ne jau katru dienu nākas lasīt par radžām, kuri mūk no lavas straumēm. Otrā nodaļa vēstīja par jauno mazo leduslaikmetu, tad sekoja bads Ķīnā un Īrijā. Bija nodaļa par Alpiem, kur šļūdoņi sāka apdraudēt gadsimtiem senas komūnas un dažu labu pat aizskaloja nebūtībā. Bija arī nodaļa par to, kā Tamboras izvirdums gandrīz sagrāva ASV dibinātāju sapni par spēcīgu lauksaimniecības valsti. Par to, ka pret jebkādu intuīciju Arktika pēc izvirduma piedzīvoja siltuma vilni vairāku gadu garumā, un no jauna radās sapnis par izdevīgu tirdzniecības ceļu ar Āziju. Autors ļoti labi ir uztvēris un prot paskaidrot cilvēka un ekosistēmas atkarību vienam no otra, to, cik labila ir šī sistēma un cik maz ir vajadzīgs, lai viss aizietu pa pieskari.

Varētu sist plaukstiņas un uzbāzties ar šo grāmatu visiem, kas ir gatavi klausīties tevī, ja nebūtu viens liels Bet. Autors vienkārši nevar nenoturēties neiebāžot normālā pārdomātā tekstā kaut ko no Mērijas Šellijas dzīves, citātu, vai grāmatas nodaļas literāro analīzi. Iespējams, ja esi literāts, kuram vienlīdz mīļi ir gan Mērija Šellija, gan katastrofiski vulkānu izvirdumi, tev šāds stiliņš liktu sajūsmā spiegt, bet mani aizrauj tikai vulkanoloģija. Tādēļ man krita uz nerviem Mērijas Šellijas gabali, izņemot ievadu, kurā autors visu Šellijas potenciālu izmantoja pa tēmu ieskicējot laikmetu. Viss pārējais man uz nerviem krita tik pamatīgi, ka biju gatavs atstāt grāmatu nelasītu, nu kam man lasīt vēlreiz par Frankenšteina vētru saistībā ar 1816. gada vētru pie Ženēvas ezera? Un šī vētra tiek pieminēta daudzas reizes.

Ja saskaita teicienu “The year without a summer”, tad atrodam to tekstā 43 reizes, nav brīnums, ka man pēc izlasīšanas šķiet, ka grāmata sastāv tikai no šīs frāzes, un Šelliju ģimenes piesaukšanu tā vai citādi 183 reizes. Ja Tambora nebūtu pieminēta 391 reizi, tad es apšaubītu vai grāmatai ir pareizs virsraksts. Labi, tā būtu tikai viena problēma, bet autoram ir vēl viena nepiedodama vājība, viņš tērē lasītāja laiku nepārtraukti atkārtojot vienu un to pašu. Tā ir lieta, kas mani “nokāva”.

Īsumā, ja esi gatavs lasīt grāmatu par vulkānu un pieciest neskaitāmas reizes lasīt vienu un to pašu, tikai ar citiem vārdiem, tad uz priekšu. Ja autors būtu labāk strukturēts, grāmata būtu uz pusi plānāk un ļoti interesanta. Lieku 5 no 10 ballēm, mani nudien neinteresēja intermēdijas par Mēriju Šelliju un autora izdomātās sarunas. Lasīt tikai, ja nekā cita nav pa rokai.

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tambora is a work that takes in science and the humanities. Wood uses contemporary accounts of the eruption and the then-unconnected effects as well as the latest papers on water currents, glaciers, typhus, opium, and political debates (among many other things) to prove how Tambora's destructive eruption (located in what was then the dutch east indies) in 1815 lived on long after its particles dispelled from the atmosphere. "The twenty-first-century climate emergency, as we all know, involves not lack of heat but too much, while higher volumes of water vapour destabilize there carbon-charged atmosphere. A new era of Frankenstein's weather [Mary Shelley and this work in particular seem to have taken much from events related to Tambora] -- heat waves, droughts, wild storms, and floods -- are increasingly part of the fabric of American life." It's to Wood's credit that he can take events from 200+ years ago and use them to helpfully illuminate what we face today, and to find both optimism and pessimism.

Stylistically, this book contains some evocative writing that present facts about, for example, the origins of the name "Yunnan" without a dryness that at times accompanies historical writing. We learn an astonishing amount of seemingly discrete matters: lice, opium, how cholera travelled so well after April 1815 among merchants and sailors, what the weather changes meant for ireland in 1816-1818's "forgotten famine" and how that was viewed by the british government, and about the enthusiasm and patriotism behind polar expeditions (about which Mary Shelley "had a gimlet eye for dangerous romantic excess in men") when it was reported that there was very little ice around greenland. There was clear ocean, for a short time, but by the time expeditions were mounted the "Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation... a submarine current system that transports tropical warmth to the North Pole via the gulf stream...", disrupted by Tambora, had returned to normal.

For me, this book is a revelation. Its geographical span, from indonesia to virginia, india through china, to the Alps and the u.k., distinguishes it in some ways from The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano that Darkened the World and Changed History by William Klingaman and Nicholas Klingaman (2013) (also worth reading). It's a book that will stay with me.

[Thom · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author connects discussions of Tambora and the aftermath to both Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and various epidemics in this mostly social history. Science is mostly neglected by G.D. Wood, an English professor. The bibliography is extensive; the rest of the book rambles considerably.

I did find the connection to both Shelleys, Byron and Keats interesting, and can see how it influenced their poetry and prose - especially Frankenstein. It seems clear that Wood has published on this subject before, and he knows it well. Another interesting point was the search for the Northwest Passage, spurred by higher melt rate in the Arctic during the immediate aftermath - though the expeditions themselves happened a few years later, when weather had reasserted to a relative norm. The hopelessness of those expeditions also makes an appearance in Shelley's work, framing the story. Illustrations of paintings and excerpts of poems round out these contributions nicely.

Unfortunately, the author seeks to connect several things to this eruption, and not all fit. The cholera epidemic in Bengal was more about poor sanitary conditions than weather changes, and while the weather killed a season of crops in Ireland and the East coast of the US, both societies were poised to suffer at the next disturbance. This book connects a lot of events due to proximity in time, and rarely convincingly. He also ignores science, and proudly acknowledges that in the epilogue. He discusses none of the impact on species, little of the impact on crops and weather, and then only when convenient. Perhaps the worst offense was to shoot down the idea of using particulate matter to reduce global warming as bad because, well, Tambora. Duh!

It is a readable book, and does have a good bibliography. If the subtitle were "The social implications of the Tambora eruption", I might have rated it 3 stars. As it is, the 2 star rating of "It was Okay" is just about perfect.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

This text covers the volcanic explosion of mt. Tambora in late spring of 1815 and its impact on global climate that lasted into the 1820s. The only culture at the time that had long term climate records was China whose weather records went back over a thousand years, which allowed the impact of this event to be compared with historic norms.
Tambora left a caldera of a similar size as the one created when Oregon's Mt. Mazama, known as Crater Lake volcanic eruption impacted the world 7,700 years ago. This was an eruption with a VEI of 7, the same rating as that of Tambra. The amount of ash and chemicals thrown into the stratosphere from this eruption had an extreme impact of the weather throughout Europe, the eastern seaboard of America, China and the Arctic: because of the lack of communication and written history the impact it had on other continents is unknown.
The atmospheric disturbance set off a series of extreme weather events, that would cause famines in Europe and China, brought on by summer and autumn heavy frosts and snows, unprecedented flooding destroying crop after crop, drowning and washing away town after town with historic droughts in other areas. The famine and dislocation of people in desperate need of food set off a migration that brought with it cholera and typhus epidemics that took an equal toll. Glaciers in the Alps pushed forward 300' in one year and the Arctic ice receded. An estimated death toll of millions followed the three year duration of extreme and previously unknown weather events.
It is a good lesson on what impact and climate havoc can be wrought by stratospheric pollution. Leading the writer to warn us, "Fossil fuel emissions of our industrial age have the same warming impact on the Arctic as volcanic sulfate (albeit by different mechanisms) but influenced of volcanic dust possesses the decided advantage - to the Arctic and humanity - of dissipating after a few years." As we enter this century with increased droughts and extreme hundred year storms and weather events that are beginning to occur yearly, with each year exceeding the hottest year on record of the previous year's record...we still manage to deny that our climate is changing rapidly, even if the rest of the world has come to grips with a warming climate that has already disrupted the social fabric of areas where flooding, famine have impacts that are very real. As glaciers retreat one of the largest future threats will be lack of water on many continents,,yet we seem to be in the same state of denial that the governments that were in power in the 1815-1820s were as their populations starved and died in the millions.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whether governments and the public want to deny or ignore, at their peril, the concept of global warming, hopefully there is no one who will deny the enormous power, force and ever-present possibility of nature rendering all civilization its hostage wherever it feels such desire. Hurricane Katrina, the volcanos of Iceland, the tsunamis in Japan all give civilization a gentle touch on the shoulder to remind us that no planning, no fortification, no dikes and no one can defy nature. Further, unlike the Human species who mostly thinks in time frames of hours, days, years, and perhaps decades, nature works in spans of hundreds of thousands of years, millions of years.

Tambora, by Gillen D'Arcy Wood, is a fascinating, broad-based and engaging book that looks at the enormous unleashed power of Mount Tambora when it erupted in 1815. Dwarfing Krakatau's eruption of 1883, Tambora vastly altered the weather patterns for three years. It created the "Year without a summer" initiated the world's first worldwide cholera epidemic and even played a major role in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Both in fact and fiction Tambora's influence still ripples today.

This book offers the reader many illustrations, facts, anecdotes and information that, taken as a whole, will also alter the way we look upon our world, and the tender and slim hold we have within it. The book in no way is fear-mongering or apocalyptic in tone or theme, but it is a book that will remind us all of the power of nature when it chooses to rouse itself.

I urge you to read it.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really an excellent book chronicling the worldwide impacts of the Mt. Tambora volcanic eruption. From
south China to India, Ireland,the Swiss alps and North America the eruption of Tambora created weather havoc worldwide and its impacts in Europe inspired a young Mary Shelley to conjure up her iconic Frankenstein monster after bearing witness to the deprivations of her European brethren suffering from a famine and droughts in its eruptive wake. Over all author Gillen D'arcy Wood does meticulous research on the event spanning the period from 1815-1818 with longer terms impacts felt way beyond those years. In the process he shows how this event shaped the world for the better part of a century. His reflections on our world of today should not go unheeded as we approach the bicentennial of the eruption of the Tambora Volcano. Mark this date April 10th, 2015 on your calendar and hope that as climate change advances in our world today they will fall way short of the impacts in comparison to this history changing event 200 yrs prior.

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The tons of particulate matter thrust high into the stratosphere on 04/10/1/15 lead to the infamous 'Year without a Summer' of 1816 which had already been primed by another massive eruption in 1809. Proof of the eruption was in various ice cores but the actual location is currently unknown - or it was at the time of publication in 2014. The weather effects from low temperatures to fierce storms continued for three years as the atmosphere gradually flushed out the sulfuric acid aerosols. No summer or with prolonged poor weather meant that there was poor or no crop yields in Europe which in turn led to mass starvation, violent uprisings, decimated towns and villages as well as weather extremes.

The author goes into those world-wide effects starting with the massive cholera epidemic in India in November of 1817 which would later spread across the world through the Far East, Russia, Europe, Africa and eventually Americas. Monsoon rains were late or failed to appear at all causing crop failure as well as no replenishment of wells and rainwater ponds. But when they did arrive, they brought flooding and disease outbreaks. The distressing sight and smell of bodies consigned to either the rivers or to fiery pyres.

In China, especially the profoundly fertile Yunnan area - suffered repeated catastrophic crop failures leaving millions of inhabitants to starve and kill the children that they couldn't sell into slavery. But as the decade closed, Yunnan farmers did find a crop that provided cash to pay taxes as well as buy rice to feed their families - opium. And a century later, opium was still a prime crop.

Effects of drought and reduced freshwater discharge on the Atlantic thermocline circulation, especially around the Arctic Circle drastically reduced ice cover and the Northwest Passage showed to be tantalizingly open. Perry's partial success in 1819 was hoped to be repeated but the horror of Franklin's disaster gripped the English public and the polar ice closed the temporary access.

On a side note - the glaciers increasing/growing in the Alps eventually led to the theory of ice ages with glaciers delivering their cargo of rock of all sizes up to the monstrous erratics and leaving behind moraines to prove their ancient range.

A low pressure, storm-rich front parked itself over Ireland, raining for over 142 days during the summer of 1816 which - not surprising - lead to widespread famine and starvation. Families sold everything from livestock, furnishing, even their clothes in order to feed their families but the lice which bear typhus spread disease and death. The saturated fields encouraged potato blight and nothing was learned or changed so when the blight struck again in the 1840's, millions died or immigrated.

America suffered the same year without a summer and bitter cold but was able to sell tons of grain to the starving European markets. Meanwhile, farmers in the Northeast decided to move to the newly opened territories of Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky and Ohio, buying land with bank loans that couldn't be covered by the buyers as paper money was worthless in a country on the gold standard. So when the European markets recovered and exports dropped, the American economy collapsed into the first economic depression. Even Thomas Jefferson was forced to mortgage his beloved Monticello, attempting to cover expenses and earlier loans.

We see a volcanic eruption and note only the initial effects of the pyroclastic flood, the tsunamis, the inundating waves, possible water contamination, destruction of land surrounding the volcano. It is rare that we look beyond to see the longer term effects that only appear years later. In a way, that's what we are experiencing now with climate change - the aftereffects of what happened years, decades, even a century or so ago.

2022-185

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World is an intensely researched and very interesting study of the effects of the volcanic eruption that took place on the island of Sumbawa in the Dutch East Indies in April of 1815. It stands as the largest eruption in the past 10,000 years and caused global climate changes over the next three years. This book traces those changes and adds some more that the author connects to Tambora's influence on local climates. His arguments, for the most part, are seemingly backed up by modern science, such as the increased glaciation in the Alps during those years . Wood also makes a good argument for the famine that occurred in Ireland due to the country-wide failure of the potato crop, a precursor of the devastating famine of 1845.

Catastrophic weather over Europe and the United States brought about the "Year Without A Summer" or, "Year of the Beggar". Extreme weather caused crops to fail and famine in Europe and China that lasted for almost three years and, in the author's view, the same extremes of weather caused crop loss in the US which led to the Panic of 1819. He also ties the pandemic outbreak of cholera in India in 1816 to Tambora's eruption and blames it on the dramatic climate change. While there seems to be new meteorological and medical evidence to support this, the extent of the author's blame seems slightly far fetched in this instance.

Wood uses the device of the Shelley Circle: Percy, Mary, her sister Claire, and Lord Byron, and their holiday on Lake Geneva in 1816 to illustrate the catastrophe. At first, this is very effective as Wood describes the weather which led to the ghost stories and the creation of Frankenstein and the later invention of the vampire figure by John Polidori, Byron's friend and physician. He shows the weather's effect on the poetry of Percy Bysshe as well as Byron in Childe Harold's Pilgimage. This is all interesting the first time but, Wood uses this group over and over. It would seem that the members of the Shelley Circle were at every ecological event in the book, or had a friend or cousin who was! In addition, Wood can't seem to make up his mind who his audience is, the casual reader or the meteorological expert. The science can get very technical here.

Underlying the main story, Wood is making a plea for paying more attention to our own climate troubles and seeking solutions before we repeat some of the glaring mistakes showcased in this book.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoughtful look at the volcano eruption that lead to the "year without a summer". the author takes the reader around the world to chart the impact of Tamora's eruption on weather and food production.

[Inken · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very interesting book on an eruption from 200 years ago that probably had serious and long-lasting impact on the world’s climate and subsequent political and societal changes. However, the author is bit too in love with his own voice and repute. His florid descriptions betray his literary background and sometimes he undermines his own conclusions and arguments with almost hilariously overblown language. As he repeatedly reminds us, he is thus far the only writer to provide a full and thorough analysis of Tambora’s effects (in a book) on a worldwide stage. There are, however, numerous articles available online and in print.

D’Arcy Wood also has a very proprietary attitude toward Tambora and scorns any suggestion that it may not have been the only reason for all the changes that occurred after the eruption. The idea that the volcano Laki’s eruption in the 1780s in Iceland may have contributed in any way is dismissed in less than a paragraph in chapter 1. Another volcano (referred to as Unknown because nobody knows which one it was) erupted in 1809 and you can almost feel the relief coming through the pages that d’Arcy Wood doesn’t know its name and therefore doesn’t have to attribute too much credit to it. d’Arcy Wood does use Tambora as a way to introduce a new interpretation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, suggesting her experiences in Switzerland during the worst of the famine there had a distinct influence on the atmosphere and mood of the novel (I haven’t read it so can’t comment).

It is, however, his descriptions of the migrants within Switzerland that brings an eerie sense of déjà vu, as thousands of Swiss peasants flooded the countryside, desperately searching for bread and a way to survive. Meanwhile, Tambora was responsible for the catastrophic cholera epidemics that devastated the Indian sub-continent and subsequently Europe, Britain and the US; whilst in China 1000s starved when the rice harvests failed repeatedly due to the destabilized weather patterns, leading to the devastating opium trade (apparently) inflicted by the British.

The author has clearly done a lot of research and whilst he is not a climatologist or volcanologist, he has written a book that does a good job of explaining the sciences behind eruptions and their chemical, physical and biological consequences. d’arcy Wood describes the early days of climatology and meteorology and the theories of glaciation, the Ice Age, even plate tectonics. There are also numerous historical events that apparently occurred as a direct result of the eruption: the Irish famine of 1816, the argument between French scientist Buffon and Thomas Jefferson over the impact on America this new freezing cold would have on the nation, as well as the Panic of 1818 and the USA’s subsequent economic depression that cost thousands their homes, money and even their lives. Interestingly, the catastrophe of 1818-20 resulted in a greater stabilization of the USA’s economic policy and regulations.

It is the final page of Tambora where d’Arcy Wood addresses the modern-day issues with climate and weather. The attitude in American society is particularly problematic, as he explains, “One consequence of the long decline of American rural life has been a profound climate illiteracy among the political class, which reflects that of the citizenry at large. . . . To suggest that the American climate is bad or getting worse is, in this historical sense, unpatriotic. . . . A new era of Frankenstein’s weather – heat waves, droughts, wild storms and floods – are increasingly part of the fabric of American life.”

Tambora is not only a scientific book, it is also a literary criticism and a condemnation of society, the tale interspersed with snide comments about privilege and status whilst quoting Byron, Shelley (Mary and Percy) and Chinese poet Li Yuyang to illustrate his points. The book ends with a cautionary tale and dire warning: if our relentless consumption of fossil fuels and destruction of forests continue, any ideas about cooling the earth and retarding the effects of climate change by creating an artificial Tambora effect will not only be catastrophically stupid, they will be redundant because we will already have replicated the appalling effects of Tambora and they will last a lot longer than three years!

[Joanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1815 Mount Tambora, located in what was then known as The Dutch East Indies, exploded with such ferocity that it's phreatic eruptions continued for the next three years. Estimates of the people that were killed directly by the explosion are still debated. However, there is no doubt that the global effect, in the years to come, took 10's of thousands of lives. Tambora, located on a peninsula, dumped her lava into the sea and was reduced in height by nearly two-thirds.

The meat of this book is not the volcano, but the climate change that occurred over the three years following the explosion. I found Gillen D'Arcy Wood's research and writing easy for the layman to follow-but there was still a little too much science for my taste. What I enjoyed most was Wood's references to the great writers (Mary and Percy Shelly, Lord Byron) and painters of the time period, who he uses as "tour guides" through events that occurred globally over the next 3 years.

Recommend for anyone who has an interest in volcanology or climate change-or anyone interested in the poetry and writing of the period and how Tambora effected it.

[Bram · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating book about the effects of the Tambora eruption in 1815. The incredible amount of ash released into the atmosphere in April 1815 caused extensive weather anomalies around the world for three years. In many parts of the world 1816 was the year without a summer. The eruption also contributed to the first major global cholera outbreak. And most surprising was how much literary authors at the time wrote about the effects of Tambora without realizing it. Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein is just one of many novels that bears the fingerprints of Tambora. Wood has written one of those great world history books in which he tells us a fascinating and engaging story.

[Sophie Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read quite a bit on this topic of late for research purposes and this has been the best book I've found so far. D'Arcy Wood not only provides a concise accounting of that event and subsequent events that can be easily tied to it (such as resulting agricultural depressions), but also looks into the less-obvious events caused by the eruption, and the development of various scientific beliefs. It's fascinating and reads quickly for such a topic.

[Randall · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the author provides some good information, he is constantly circling back to how the event affected Mary Shelley and her circle of friends. This got beyond distracting and pointless and seemed more like padding to extend the length of the book.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A diligently researched study of volcanism and its radical effect on world climate and culture. Wood structures his book around 6 studies of volcanic climate aberrations that caused famine, plague, and unrest across the globe during the Tambora volcanic event of 1815-1818. While he meticulously explains the science behind these cases, he also links these events to the literature (frequently poetry), policy, and humanist advances precipitated by these disasters. His voice and tone are poised and eloquent; eminently confident. Of course the shadow of man-made climate changes is ever-present, if not explicit, until the end where his message is not preachy, but blunt. Throughout, his insights are canny and novel where literature and the arts are concerned. The dots he connects between humanitarian disasters and advances in science and political thought are super-well argued. Nice work, overall. Anyone interested in sublime natural phenomena and 19th century lit should also give this one a go.

[Jody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating. Terrifying. This exhasutive examination of the global efects of one volcano erruption is astounding in what it reveals about the interconectedness of the weather and climate of the earth.
The wrting is not always great, sometimes it feels like a class lecture with the same points repeated for those who missed class yesterday, but this is what keeps it from being being a classic for the ages.
A frequent (too frequent) cultural touchstone is Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" written during the same period and clearly influenced by the anomolous weather. I took the opportunity to read "Frankenstein" alongside "Tambora" Which added quite a lot to the enjoyment of both. "Frankenstein" is not all what you imagine it is, if you've never read it before. It is not a scary horror story.

[Lindegard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four-and-a-half stars would be a better rating. So many cultural activities from 1815 to 1818 may be explained in part by the Tambora phenomenon. Reading this book, my brain was often exclaiming, "OMG!" and "Aha! That explains it!"

On the negative side, I felt that the book oscillated between exciting stories of the Romantic writers impacted by the Tambora disaster, and dry data that seemed as though copied out of a science or science history text. (I'm not saying such data were plagiarized, but rather that there was a ho-hum, unoriginal quality about the presentation of this information).

But I would state unequivocally that this book changed the way I think about European art, music, and culture in general in the years immediately following the Tambora eruption. Very well done.

[RebL · Rating 3 out of 5]

The topic itself is fascinating, but the book was hard to get through. I'm no slouch in the vocabulary department, but there was a LOT of words in this one, and the author seems to enjoy using three words where one is sufficient. It was also difficult to read much at bedtime, because it turned out to be an excellent soporific. After two or three pages each evening I was out like a light. Two-And-A-Half Stars.

[Michele · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book falls under the category of "stuff to think about more". Ostensibly, it's a sort of butterfly effect story about how a major volcanic eruption in one side of the world changed lives on the other side, but that also makes it another strong evidential story supporting climate change theories and our general inter-connectedness through nature.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. One volcano changed the world for 3 years. Cold weather in summer - snow in summer too, cholera, famine, typhus, crop failure. Amazing. Great study in what happens in climate change. Makes me wonder what our manmade global warming will do. Good read.

[Margaret Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Call me romantic, but I think it’s a shame that we know so little about the actual eruption of Tambora in 1815. I relished the Political Intrigue of Mount Pelee in 1902, Pliny’s personal account of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD that brought the West so much pleasure, and the Mount St Helen’s 1980 Media Superstar. Even Krakatoa gave me an adrenalin rush.

With this in mind, the climate science of D’Arcy Wood’s book was interesting, but what I wouldn’t give for an eye witness account and all the emotions that go with it. I did enjoy the Byron/ Shelley chapters and the wild weather that rather suited their free love, drug-laden, suicide-filled social lives. Which came first, one might ask, and how strange that a volcanic nightmare should come along that so exactly suited their lives?

Once the chapter recording the paltry accounts we have of Tambora’s immediate fury was passed, I scoured the succeeding chapters for what I was sure must come next, pyroclastic flows, lava, fire, brimstone, sulphur, the massive detonation that created the present six kilometre wide caldera. (6k is huge. I doubt whether Vesuvius was half a kilometre wide when I was there.) I was very disappointed when the eruption ended so early in the book. Was that all, I wondered? Where was the build-up, the warning signs, the last opportunity for escape, the ships passing at the time filled with spices on the way to Europe? Did nobody notice anything worth recording?

It's a terrible thing to admit that you read volcano books for emotions.

The doomed quest to find the North West Passage did grab my attention. For an entire century, it seems, the brief promise of a northern waterway from Britain to China that Tambora had created, tempted men to believe it would always be open. How fickle is the imagination of man! As Woods points out, the romance of the race to the poles and the NW passage, fed by imperialistic hubris, was not finally quashed until WW1 obliterated the romance of exploration.

[Teri · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was hard to push myself to finish reading this book, but I did so only because I don't like leaving things undone. The information in this book relating to the grand explosion of Mt Tambora is interesting in itself, and how it actually affected the world in terms of weather and how that weather, in turn, affected people and the choices they made. For example, the crazy weather influenced Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, into writing that book. There are plenty of other examples in the books and it all rather reminds me of the movie Forest Gump, wherein one man affected so many people and brought about so many goods all by being himself. The author tends to do that in regard to Mt Tambora - that because of Tambora's explosion, there as a domino effect throughout the world, which in turn helped bring about all these other things, like books, ships, political divisions, tyrants, artists, you name it.

However, though I'm not sure exactly how he comes to this conclusion (though he attempts to explain it in the book), the author goes on to intimate throughout the book that it is humankind who is at fault of "global warming"/"climate change". It makes no sense to me. First of all because I tend to agree with the honest climate experts that climate change is a millennia-long, needed pattern for Earth, and that man is not the one responsible for it (scientifically speaking).

Other than the author's strong "pushing" of this agenda of "climate change" where humans are the culprit, the book could have been more interesting. I'm glad I finished it. I would not recommend it, unless a person is directly interested in volcanoes and weather, and/or if a person is fully and blindly a believer in "climate change"/"global warming" and wants more excuses for how it's a "real" thing.

[William Fuller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Father's Day (and birthdays and Christmases) are such wonderful excuses for giving books (and gift certificates for books). I just finished reading one of my gifts, Tambora by Gillen D'Arcy Wood. Mt. Tambora was a volcano on Sumbawa Island in the East Indies which experienced a massive eruption in 1815. So what does that have to do with an ensuing cholera pandemic, expansion of the Chinese opium trade, devastation of Ireland by typhus, exploration of polar waters by British sea captains, the writing of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the U.S. financial panic of 1819 and the impoverishment of Thomas Jefferson? Wood's book is not so much about the geological aspects of volcanology as it is the effects of such massive cataclysms on the earth's climate and the impact of such climate changes on human affairs and indeed on human existence. The book is an informative mixture of science and history, and, if you've never heard of the year that New Englanders labeled “1800-and-froze-to-death,” you just might find this book as educational as I did.

Wood's book is admittedly one that is giving me pause before assessing the number of stars that I give it. For its educational and informative content, and especially for giving me quite a bit of history of which I had no previous knowledge, I do not hesitate to give it five stars. However, I found the overall tone and "feeling" of the text somewhat less than inspirational; it is certainly not plodding or didactic, but I kept looking for the author's excitement in his topic to burst through, but for that I waited almost to the very end. For what is said then, five stars; for the way in which it is said, four.

[Lynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author Wood does an excellent job of exploring all the results of the biggest historical volcanic eruption ever. His description of the eruption itself is suitably dramatic, and brings out the immediate personal cost to the local residents (basically, they mostly all died), and how the eruption and consequent tsunami caused thousands of casualties not just on Sumbawa, but on many other islands in the East Indies. He then goes into a reasonably detailed description of the long-term aftermath, which lasted through the 1820s with famines, epidemics, and economic dislocations.
Wood links all the world-wide effects back to the volcano through citation of original sources. His documentation is very thorough, and in some cases his translation is the first into English of various sources writing about the after-effects of the eruption. He also does a compare & contrast with other large volcanic eruptions, and compares weather following the eruption with other disruptions to weather patterns into modern times. In all cases, he manages not to bog the reader down in jargon, and explains technicalities very clearly for the lay reader. He also discusses how the eruption gave rise to meteorol0gy as a science, and how much has changed when it comes to predicting the weather.

All in all, this is a very good book about a world-scale natural disaster that reflects what could happen if a major volcanic eruption occurred tomorrow.

[Melinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A worthwhile book to read, especially in light of the fact that no prior knowledge of the eruption of Tambora would have changed the end results. Good to realize in this age of "we can avoid XZY if we reduce our carbon footprint" or whatever. There is MUCH about how our world behaves and renews itself and then causes destruction again before renewing that we just do not understand much less know how to control or manage. I think a little humility goes a long way in those areas, and a book like this reinforces just how much we really cannot control and don't fully understand.

Tambora erupted in 1815, before the telegraph was invented. Krakatoa erupted in 1883, after the telegraph had been invented and spread throughout the world. Thus Krakatoa was more well known because it was reported very soon (hours) after the eruption. In retrospect Tambora was more devastating, but that was only discovered after the results gathered about Krakatoa were then turned to evaluate Tambora.

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Just read this interesting article that posits the extinction event that brought down the dinosaurs was caused by massive volcanic eruptions, not a massive meteor. Good reading especially after reading about all the volcanoes!
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...