Krakatoa
The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883
By Simon Winchester 

      Beyond the potential of this book’s cover and dustcover to take all of the year’s top prizes for design*, Krakatoa by Simon Winchester has much more to recommend it.

      It is a veritable roller coaster ride for the curious. It takes us on a dizzying path that revises what we know about Darwin and relates it to what we never learned in school about the earth sciences, history, religion and politics.

      It covers much that general secondary and tertiary education in America neglects, geology and geography. Further, so much is new since the 1960’s that what many of us studied “way back then” is hopelessly out of date. This is a book that will expose the reader to the newer earth science: tectonic plates, continental drift and more. It also energizes these subjects by relating them to what is going on in the world today and dramatizing the astonishing results they produce

      Winchester’s language sometimes seems archaic but then, on the same page, it can be positively winsome. The first pages have the musty odor of academe, but when Wichestern swings into first person, most readers will be glad they stayed on for the ride. It is also true that Winchester occasionally overreaches for drama, as with the tale of the baby circus elephant spooked by the intimations of oncoming disaster. Such tactics seem wholly unnecessary, for the book is an exciting trip and needs no embellishing.

     *Artists involved in this knock-out presentation are Roberto de Vieq de Cumpitch, Coney Jay, and Toshihiko Chinami.