Simon Winchester has two that might interest yuo - Krakatoa, and Crack in the World, about the San Fransisco earthquake.

I also have gone through a phase or two of wanting to read about disasters. Usually my interest is in man made - so for a long time I was reading books about the Titanic (this was long before the movie came out). Not sure why this is - perhaps akin to staring at the accident on the side of the road as you drive by...

Heh! I thought everybody liked to read about natural disasters. ;-)

Ginny, you might be interested in another take on the 1902 eruption on Martinique: La Catastrophe: The Eruption of Mount Pelee, the Worst Volcanic Disaster of the 20th Century by Alwyn Scarth. My husband, a geophysicist and volcanologist, was better impressed with Scarth than Zebrowski. I liked both -- giving The Last Days of St. Pierre the edge on narrative style but conceding that Scarth wins on knowledge and credentials. I guess it depends on what you want, but as I always say (probably too often): it's best to read synoptically.

What other kinds of natural disasters are you interested in? Between us, my husband and I have a whole bookcase of everything from volcanoes to earthquakes, hurricanes to floods, tornadoes to duststorms, comets to asteroid impacts, etc. So I can probably recommend something.

One of my recent favorites is Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event That Changed History by William Ryan and Walter Pitman. This is a geological and geophysical interpretation of evidence of the Mediterranean backflowing through the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, and the Bosporus about 7,500 years ago. This created a gigantic waterfall and filled the basin of what was once a freshwater lake that we now call the Black Sea. Of course, the geology is interesting, but I'm also intensely interested in the people who witnessed the event -- and there surely were people who did. This ties in with linguistic evidence, archaeology, folklore and legend (the Bible included), and patterns of influx migrations of people into parts of Europe and in all the other directions during a relatively short period of time, bringing their cultures and languages and genes with them. Just look and imagine what a disaster on that scale can do, and probably did!

Discussion of natural disasters (volcanoes and earthquakes) reminded me of the geology of our winter escape location - southern california (near Holtville); located on the San Andreas fault system. On our arrival here 3 years ago, we tried to find out more about the earthquakes (severity, patterns of occurance, etc), but were met with an almost pragmatic disinterest by the long term residents. We went to a natural history museum, which helped to some extent, but in an unexpected manner. This (Imperial) valley has a unique history in the last couple of hundred years, relating to the changing of the course of the Colorado River about every 100 years, making the Salton Sea. I did find a historical novel based in this local, The Winning of Barbara Worth, by Harold B Wright, which explained somewhat. It was not a great novel, but never-the-less a fairly good read. I suppose I should go to some of the other towns around here to see what else I can find.

Yes, history based on the thoughts and action of people, real or ficticious, wins every time.

Bob

How about Erik Lawson's Isaac's Storm about the 1900? hurricane that wiped out most of Galveston?

I am not as systematic about it as you, Friedag--and it was your post on another thread that made me think of this subject. I will definitely take a look at La Catastrophe, which I had not heard of. I just read what catches my attention. Noah's Flood sounds intriguing too.

I have read Simon Winchester's Krakatoa. Good but he does digress incessantly and at great length which can be really annoying. I have also read Isaac's Storm, which was good but not great, I thought. Scary how Galveston has been built right up again.

I guess it is the combination of reality and the power of nature that's so interesting to me. But I can't blame people living on a major fault for not reading about earthquakes--too much reality there. I lived in California for a year but never felt a thing. But I was in a minor earthquake when we lived in, of all places, Tennessee, part of which is on the New Madrid fault, supposedly worse than the San Andreas. There's something to read about.

I'm not a great reader of disaster books (though I do have Krakatoa on my TBR shelf), but one I couldn't put down was R.A. Scotti's Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938. Without the radar and weather monitoring and whatnot we have now, the hurricane came right up the east coast and struck without warning. It plowed over Long Island and tore into Rhode Island and Connecticut causing incredible damage. I live in CT, so this was of extra interest to me. A really good book.

Another I really enjoyed was David Keys' Catastrophe about the natural disaster (he claims it was a super-volcano, possibly even Krakatoa) that caused massive climate change and plunged the world into the Dark Ages. The resulting weather/agricultural changes and population migrations ultimately shaped our modern world. A very interesting book that I'd like to find time to re-read.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sudden Sea

I took a Mythology course in college, and one of our assignments was for each of us to take a different civilization and look up the flood story. My country was China, and the story was almost identical to that of the Biblical Noah. This was in 1953, so no telling what the current information is; but at that time, everyone's chosen country had a very similar flood story.

I really liked "Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America by John M. Barry. (contains a great social history of New Orleans, also). It is well written and quite shocking in terms of what it reveals about how certain groups were treated....

A few years ago, I read a beautifully written book about the Johnstown (Pa) flood. It was predicated upon the fact that certain individuals knew the dam was going to break but did nothing. Does anyone recall title and author?

Mary, if the book you read was nonfiction, it could be David McCullough's The Johnstown Flood. If it was a novel, perhaps it's In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden by Kathleen Cambor. Do either of those sound right?

Frieda, thanks! I thought that title might have been it, but was not completely certain. It is, in fact, "Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden".

The only book I remember reading about natural disasters is The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett. A review by an epidemiologist said the author's predictions were overwrought and exaggerated but praised the chapters about recent epidemics around the world.

Regarding Noah's flood, I've read speculation that the explosion of the volcano at Thera (Santorini) which sent huge tsunamis to all parts of the Mediterranean and up the Nile was source of the legend. Julian Jaynes in The Origin of Consciousness posited that it was the stress of the disaster that caused modern consciousness to develop.

Along the lines of epidemics, I once read an excellent account of the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793. It was called "Bring Out Your Dead". The author was J.H. Powell. I have since run into this epidemic in other reading. Just now, I'm reading a biography of Dolley Madison who lost her first husband in that outbreak.

John Barry also wrote The Great Influenza which I'd like to read. Has anyone read The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan? It's about the American Dust Bowl years, and I've seen favorable reviews for it, but haven't read it.

I've read Richard Preston's The Demon in the Freezer about the smallpox virus, which is scary to contemplate. After reading Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, I did a little research and found an interesting historical sketch of the Black Death on Gutenberg by a 19th century professor of medicine named JFC Hecker. It gives an interesting account of how the Black Death spread from country to country.

cjoseph, I haven't read The Origin of Consciousness; but I'm wondering if Jaynes was actually talking about how the explosion of Thera might explain the legends of the Biblical plagues of Egypt in the book of Exodus, as well as the parting of the "Red Sea." (It could also explain the phenomenal rise of the Phoenicians.) I don't think I've ever heard or read of its association with the flood tradition.

Carolyn, I think there are flood stories in just about every culture. China would certainly have them, with their history of the Huang (Yellow) and Chang (Ygantze) rivers. What is so interesting to me about the theory is the sudden filling of the Black Sea basin could have influenced just about all aspects of Middle Eastern, European, and Central Asian life: gene dispersion, languages, culture, etc. I'm sure further evidence needs to be produced; but as a working theory, I think it's an exciting one. And it seems to me that it logically would explain so much. After all, the oral traditions and cultural influences had to have come from somewhere! These were full-blown changes and incursions in a relatively short time.

Ah! Diseases are natural disasters -- at least sometimes, particularly historically. This is one of my favorite subjects -- the historical part, that is (not so much the modern aspects). I remember the first time I read William H. McNeill's Plagues and Peoples: I was hopped up for days.

I looked in my copy of Jaynes, and, no, he didn't mention the flood legend but the Atlantis legend. I don't remember where I read the speculation, but the Wikipedia says "some have asserted that the original versions of the Greek myth of Deukalion's flood likely originated from the effects of the megatsunami created by the eruption of Thera in the 18th-15th century BC" without citing who made the assertion.

Nobody's mentioned "A Perfect Storm" by--uh, oh, I can see his face but can't call his name to mind. Is it Sebastian Junger? Very good writer. About the destruction of a fishing boat caught in a terrible storm.

If you liked Plagues and People, you might also like Rats, Lice and History.

There was also a very good non-fiction book about the small pox epidemic that stuck during the American Revolution, but I can't remember the name.