Average Rating: 
Rating:  - The death and re-birth of an island.
'Popular Science' has a slightly pejorative ring to it that is undeserved, as good examples serve to increase general awareness and dispel urban myths - this book is one of those good examples.
Written in Mr. Winchester's energetic, entertaining style, this book is well-researched and peppered with neat little snippets of information and pertinent anecdotes, backed up with solid evidence. He goes into much historical detail about the East Indies and its importance in world trade and politics during the run-up to the cataclysmic explosion that devastated the island.
One quibble; in extolling the virtues of Batavia, he forgets that the place was reviled by seamen in the 18th C (Anson, Cook, Dampier, Davis et al) as a suffocating hell-hole of disease, stench and filth. He examines the explosion of scientific theories that arose in the aftermath of the event, and the small part he played in proving that plate tectonics works (the chapter on The Wallace Line contains the most lucid crash course on plate tectonics I've seen). Most of this has been said before, but the difference here is he attributes the area's political and religious changes directly to the explosion. Some of this information seems extraneous to the main thrust of the book, (e,g, Wallace and Darwin), but it has a purpose ... It serves to underline the tremendous, slow forces that drive plate tectonics (unheard of then), and the devastating results of any blockage. Given all this background data it should come as no surprise to learn that Krakatoa has exploded many times in the geologically recent past (60,000 years), and most assuredly will in the future.
Eruptions are an everyday occurence, but this gigantic 'throat-clearing' was the first global-scale event to be reported within minutes of it happening, and Mr. Winchester draws on many first-hand accounts to describe in horrendous detail the titanic scale of the event. The explosion shook the world to its core, both physically and metaphorically; long-held beliefs of the solidity of the Earth and Man's significance were blown away. Religious and scientific establishments had to re-think their stances; but amazingly, some still clung (and cling now!) to the old immutable doctrines, even in the light of such solid evidence.
The sterile islands that formed in the wake of the explosion were a clean sheet for Nature, and observations of new life colonising them became the new focus of scientific study, in a less human-controlled way than E.O. Wilson did in the Florida Keys. As with most of Mr. Winchester's books, this is a very instructive and entertaining read, thoughtfully & thankfully containing an appendix on further reading, which I recommend to any popular science/history fan. *****
Rating: - A total hoot!
I greatly enjoyed this sly, somewhat disorganized, tongue in cheek discussion of perhaps-the-most-famous-volcanoe-yet. Winchester is clearly highly knowledgeable about various aspects of geology & writes in a way that made this layman really want to go out & learn more. His endless tangents and footnotes were almost always entertaining and worthwhile forays into new knowledge, and while they did break up the stream of narrative at times they also served to humanize what is otherwise a truly Humongous event. The book does an excellent job with scale -one actually gets a sense of just how big things were, from explosions to tsunamis- and the eye-witness accounts of the aftermath of the eruption were truly horrific. Some of the early speculation on the possible impact of a pre-Krakatoa Krakatoa Event seemed to be on (dare I say it?) shaky ground, but when Winchester cuts to the know historical record of the eruption he seems rock solid. I felt that the attempt to "bring the book up to the present minute" by discussing the putative impact of Krakatoa on the rise of Islamic extremism in Indonesia & the hint that the bombing in Bali last year might be yet another (cultural) aftershock of the eruption a bit forced (If you ever do a second edition Simon, I'd kill that whole chapter). These complaints aside I frankly couldn't put the book down, went straight back to school & recommended it to my students & friends & will be watching for Winchester's next production with cheerful anticipation.
Rating:  - No detail too insignificant
While parts of this book were indeed interesting, I found the majority of it to be rather tedious and only marginally relevant. Mr. Winchester covers a wide range of topics somewhat related to Krakatoa, from the history of the Dutch East Indies, to plate tectonics and evolution, to the rise of Islam in Indonesia, with only one climactic chapter dealing with the actual explosion. Unfortunately, this book feels more like an incohesive collection of essays which have little to do with each other. In reading it, I got the sense that many of the chapters were written to fill pages, and make the book look more substantial. The low point for me was reading an entire chapter devoted to a traveling circus on Java, and an elephant which went on a rampage shortly before the mountain exploded. Add to that stories of people whose dinner plates fell and broke, and barometers with funny measurements. Even in the centerpiece chapter, the author devotes a dozen pages describing the beautiful sunsets which were seen around the world due to the volcano. There is no doubt that this book was well researched. Perhaps a little too well researched, with the author not knowing which details to omit. With a little editing, this book could have been slimmed down to about 100 pages.
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