“The Pacific is an oceanic behemoth of eye-watering complexity.”
“A near-limitless range of human and natural conditions exists within its borders, as “The Pacific is an oceanic behemoth of eye-watering complexity.”
“A near-limitless range of human and natural conditions exists within its borders, as one would expect of something so unimaginably enormous.” In a word, its dimensions are staggering.
When I began my reading of PACIFIC, my expectations were that I would encounter something similar to its sister tome which I reviewed with the following summary:
“… , ATLANTIC moves from the tectonic formation of this vast body of water in the mists of antiquity through the various stages of its participation in the history of man upon the earth such as exploration and discovery, colonization, imperialism, warfare and violence, transportation, communication, exploitation, pollution and, as one would expect today, anthropogenic climate warming.”
Obviously, Simon Winchester reached the decision that the Pacific was simply too gargantuan and too overwhelming to attempt that type of all-inclusive approach. Instead, he picked a series of dates scattered throughout reasonably recent history that allowed him to touch on each of these topics someplace within the Pacific Ocean’s vast domain while making no attempt to be exhaustive or even particularly linear.
For me, that approach worked well and made for some interesting, informative, instructive reading on a diverse set of topics that almost read like a series of nominally related novellas. Potential readers might be interested in Winchester’s choice of topics:
1) January 19, 1950: Truman Backs Making The Hydrogen Bomb – The Great Thermonuclear Sea 2) August 7, 1955: First Japanese Transistor Radio is Made – Mr Ibuka’s Radio Revolution 3) April 10, 1959: The Surfing Movie Gidget is Released – The Ecstasies of Wave Riding 4) January 23, 1968: The USS Pueblo is Captured by North Korea – A Dire and Dangerous Irritation 5) January 10, 1972: The RMS Queen Elizabeth Sinks, Hong Kong – Farewell, All My Friends and Foes 6) Christmas Day, 1974: Australian Supercyclone Tracy Touches Down – Echoes of Distant Thunder 7) November 11, 1975: Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam is Dismissed – How Goes the Lucky Country? 8) February 17, 1977: The Submersible Alvin Spots an Abyssal Heat Source – The Fires in the Deep 9) December 12, 1981: Coral Bleaching is Seen on Great Barrier Reef – A Fragile and Uncertain Sea 10) June 15, 1991: Mount Pinatubo Erupts, Philippines – Of Masters and Commanders 11) June 2, 1976: The Hawaiian Canoe Hokule’a Completes Her Maiden Voyage – Epilogue: The Call of the Running Tide
Aside from the chapter on surfing which I thought to be fatuous and, quite frankly, boring to tears, the stories ranged from interesting and informative to jaw-dropping, worrisome, and head-shaking. That said, perhaps that chapter on surfing was intended to show up the oft-times silly proclivities of US culture and to contrast with the self-interested, bombastic, and imperialistic manner in which the US destroyed so many lives and contaminated so much territory with toxic nuclear fallout during the 1950s nuclear development program.
PACIFIC ultimately, in my opinion, is a rather sad book that, given global climate warming and the political head-butting that we are seeing today with China and North Korea, leaves one with a worried outlook as to what our future in the second half of the 21st century might look like. Read it, enjoy it, learn from it, and reach your own decisions. Definitely recommended.
Paul Weiss
Strictly an afterthought, but I was struck by two extended quotations that I thought particularly insightful and downright ingenious. (The jealous wannabe writer in me turns green with envy and admiration)!
The first is an extended outrageous and absolutely hilarious description of Sir Leslie Colin Patterson, a memorable Australian diplomat:
"He was by all appearances overfed; was often overcome with what appeared to be libation-triggered tiredness and emotional excess; and to judge from his utterances, was evidently wildly oversexed. His outbursts caused many of his more sensitive listeners to recoil. His favorite nonsexual pastime, which he often indulged in while giving the very speeches that so marked his career, seemed to be either nasal excavation and gastronomy or competitive wind breaking. He was a caricature, in short, ... "
The second is a closing fervent wish that the USA and China can come to a peaceful understanding of each other's desire for hegemony in the vast expanse of the Pacific:
"Instead of aircraft carriers and pollution, garbage gyres and coral bleaching being the bywords of our presence, there should now be a fresh kind of lexicon. Respect, reverence, accommodation, admiration, and awe for much that the East stands for - all these should now be the new watchwords. For from these ancient calming cultures, there is very much more to learn and absorb than there is to fear and resist. The benefits of Western modernity are quite obvious and should be sought after by all. But the wise benefits of antiquity should not be discounted, either ..."...more
Hard sci-fi pioneering space exploration at its very best!
Martin Humphries, a fabulously wealthy industrialist living on a lunar colony, passionately Hard sci-fi pioneering space exploration at its very best!
Martin Humphries, a fabulously wealthy industrialist living on a lunar colony, passionately despises his second son, Van. Cruelly labeling him as "the runt" and bullying him relentlessly as a directionless, untalented weakling, Humphries blames Van for the death of his wife during Van's birth and, in fact, resents him for even being alive. Humphries' beloved eldest son, Alex, who Van also loved dearly, lost his life in the first manned exploration of the surface of Venus. When Humphries announces that he is terminating his son's stipend and that he is offering a $10 billion prize to the first person who recovers his beloved Alex's remains from Venus, it is quite clear that Van, who is without any other means of support, is being manipulated and forced by his own father into choosing a path that will likely lead to his death. The waters become muddied and the fight for that almost unimaginably large prize becomes a heated race when Lars Fuchs, a rock rat from the Asteroid belt and Humphries' long time corporate foe, announces he is also making a play for the prize.
Venus won't win any prizes when it comes to literary status. Nor does it convey any subliminal moral messages, political satire, mystical symbolism or any of those other things that deep thinkers often consider necessary for a novel to be deemed truly great. But if you're looking for a hard-driving plot with palpable suspense and superb hard science fiction supported by a wealth of current hard scientific fact, then Venus is a novel you'll want to read. Bova's ability to weave science seamlessly into a fast-paced plot is simply wonderful - orbital and celestial mechanics, plate tectonics, volcanism, planetary evolution, chemistry, biology, physics, aerospace engineering, rocketry and more. In fact, it's safe to say that Venus, with a hostile surface environment straight out of Dante's Inferno, is the major character in the novel!
But, let's take nothing away from the rest of the novel. Bova's characters, in a word, succeed! They evoke emotions in a reader fully ensnared in the action who will care about what happens. His heroes have their flaws and weaknesses but they're likable and they develop meaningfully over the course of the novel. His villains are despicable but they too evolve in an understandable human way. The dialogue is appropriate to the environment of a quasi-military space exploration vehicle. And the twist ending - well, suffice it to say that there is one! Let's not give anything away other than to say it will bring a smile to most reader's faces!
Take note, science lovers and science-phobes alike!
This time it's not the Appalachians or England.
In A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING, Bill BrysonTake note, science lovers and science-phobes alike!
This time it's not the Appalachians or England.
In A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING, Bill Bryson has taken his readers on an exciting, informative and always entertaining tour of both the history of science and the details of the science itself. Essays covering an eclectic diversity of scientific topics ranging from the Big Bang and quantum physics, to paleontology, geology, biology, pandemics, genetics, evolution, glaciation, plate tectonics, weather patterns, volcanism and beyond are pitched at the perfect level to be accessible to the layman without being patronizing to a reader who happens to be more informed about a particular topic. Even the most esoterically learned science-ready polymath will find at least one or two of the topics set at a level high enough to be challenging as well.
Beautiful illustrations peppered throughout the text, a dash of humour and cynicism plus a wonderful series of amusing anecdotes and side bars make A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING a delicious confection of eye candy and brain candy. The multiplicity and diversity of the ideas covered means that A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING can be read in bite-sized chunks with the interested reader taking a random walk through the book starting at virtually any paragraph on any page. But the intelligent organization of the topics and the chronology that Bryson follows also guarantees a thoroughly enjoyable reading experience for those that want to travel from first page to last in order!
Science-phobes take note! If you've been looking for a way to set your fears aside, A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING just might be the ticket you've been looking for. Highly recommended.
Dateline, August 79 AD: Marcus Attilius Primus, a young, savvy aquarius, or water engineer, has been sent fromA natural history page-turning thriller!
Dateline, August 79 AD: Marcus Attilius Primus, a young, savvy aquarius, or water engineer, has been sent from Rome as replacement for the AWOL Exomnius to ensure the proper maintenance of Aqua Augusta, the aqueduct that supplies Pompeii, Herculaneum and the towns on the Bay of Naples. Investigation into the problem of the aqueduct drying up and its failure to deliver its critical liquid payload uncovers not only municipal theft of water and graft of epic proportions but natural problems and concerns relating to Vesuvius and its pending eruption - tremors, pollution of the water with sulphur emissions, rockfalls, and shifts and bulges in the earth's surface, not to mention breakages and blockages in the aqueduct itself.
Insofar as the eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum are concerned, we all know how the story ends. So it fell to Harris' skill as a writer to build and maintain momentum and suspense in spite of that. With the clever device of a brief excerpt from a scientific treatise on volcanism serving as a preface to every chapter plus absolutely scintillating descriptive writing, what might have been a monumentally boring exposition of the final few hours leading up to Vesuvius' cataclysmic eruption becomes rather a thrilling natural history page turner that actually had my stomach twisted up into knots as I felt the clock ticking toward the inevitable catastrophe!
The resolution of Exomnius' disappearance and the discovery of the theft of water by Numerius Popidius Ampliatus, an ex-slave and now Pompeii's wealthiest citizen, serve as a springboard for Harris' outstanding description of an extraordinary cross section of daily life in the ancient Roman provinces - slaves vs freemen, men vs women, and children, the luxury and indolence of the wealthy vs the difficulties and squalid conditions of the poor, politicians vs their constituency, the use of the "games" as a means of distracting and buying off the general population, the baths, and the Roman diet. His charming portrayal of Pliny the Elder and the discussions surrounding the aqueduct problem will amaze and delight readers with the surprising level of sophistication of Roman science and engineering.
Sadly, the dénouement after the eruption and Harris' winding down of the romantic involvement of Marcus Attilius with Corelia Ampliata, who is promised under a contract of marriage to one of Pompeii's leading politicos, just doesn't come anywhere close to the standards of the first three-quarters of the book! What might have been a five-star book that I was tempted to place in my "Top Ten All-Time" list became merely good as I closed the covers on the final few chapters! Too bad, for sure, but 4-star recommendations are nothing to sniff at! POMPEI was well worth my time and I enjoyed it immensely.
If you enjoy a really good scare, think about Trump in the Oval Office while you’re reading!
Natural disasters are called “natural” for a reason. They If you enjoy a really good scare, think about Trump in the Oval Office while you’re reading!
Natural disasters are called “natural” for a reason. They happen. It’s a fact of life and, as seismologist Lucy Jones repeatedly warns us, they’re not a matter of “if”. It’s always “when” and “how big”. She also acerbically cautions us, if you think you’re ready for the “big one”, then you can be assured that nature is very capable of dumping something on you that is far more massive, terrifying and damaging than you could possibly plan for within the constraints of political reality and limited human resources.
Although there’s enough technical information in Lucy Jones’ master work to whet the whistle of any natural science geek who wants to know the difference between a vertical fault and a sub-horizontal fault or why tsunamis inevitably follow sub-oceanic earthquakes, The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us (And What We Can Do About Them) is not first and foremost a book on seismology, hydraulic engineering or volcanology. It is a compelling essay on the sociology and the history of natural disasters – how we shape our lives in the ever present likelihood of disasters and how we have modified ourselves, our cities, our lives and our culture after “the big ones” happen to us.
The Big Ones will fascinate you with the awe-inspiring stories of 11 of the most destructive and devastating natural disasters in human history that will leave you as breathless as the most compelling suspense thriller you’ve ever read – the 1755 earthquake that leveled Lisbon and its subsequent re-construction under the powerful leadership of Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, whose exemplary skills could be used to define statesmanship; the bald-faced, shameless deceit of the Hoover Republicans in 1929 when they repudiated every campaign promise made or implied to the black community after the Mississippi floods of 1927; the drowning and near bankruptcy of the state of California in the devastating floods of 1861, floods that most Americans have never even heard of; the stagnant and still incomplete recovery from 2005’s Hurricane Katrina caused by the compounded effects of systemic racism, incompetence, poor planning, and graft and corruption at every government level; the near impossible cascade of black swan events that caused the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, a nuclear meltdown whose magnitude and resulting devastation eclipsed even Chernobyl.
The Big Ones is an informative masterpiece that, despite its theme, closes with a carefully tempered feeling of optimism that we are learning and we are getting better at dealing with that which is impossible to avoid. On the other hand, we know that when Yosemite decides it’s time to erupt, the jig is up!
The 1783 eruption of Laki in Iceland is one of the world’s great unsung natural disasters. With the aid of stratYosemite's turn is coming! Be patient!
The 1783 eruption of Laki in Iceland is one of the world’s great unsung natural disasters. With the aid of stratospheric weather and wind patterns over a period of eight months following Laki’s first eruption, a toxic cocktail of ash, fluorine, sulphur and other poisonous chemicals that had been propelled to the upper reaches of earth’s atmosphere, was spread over much of the northern hemisphere throughout the world. While the direct death toll in Iceland resulting from the eruption was only 9,300 poor souls, estimates of the number of fatalities world wide range as high as a staggering 6,000,000 deaths. The causes of these deaths ranged from famine and drought, hypothermia and heat stroke, bronchitis, asthma, emphysema, and other respiratory ailments to fluorine poisoning and even more bizarre maladies such as suffocation by carbon dioxide. In Egypt, for example, the monsoons failed and the critical resulting annual Nile flood failed to occur. It has been estimated that as much as one-sixth of Egypt’s population at the time expired during the resulting famine. As explosive power goes, Laki was a mere child compared to overgrown monsters such as Mt St Helens, Vesuvius, Tambora or Krakatau but, when it came to tallying the body count, Laki was most definitely world class and, arguably, a possible world champion. Island on Fire does a brilliant job of explaining the science behind how this disparity arose (On a lighter note, Witze and Kanipe observed that it could have been worse. Laki did not result in any pyroclastic flows, torrential landslides or mudflows, flash flooding due to glacial melting, significant earthquakes or tsunamis).
While Witze and Kanipe explore the lives of the people who lived through that event such as Jón Steingrímsson, the pastor who witnessed the events at close hand and did such a superb job recording them for posterity, the emphasis in Island on Fire is definitely the science of volcanoes – their distribution around the world, their development, their eruption and the promulgation of their effects locally and around the world. There is even a rather grotesque chapter on the almost bewildering variety of ways in which unsuspecting, unlucky bystanders can be killed by a volcano.
It is no mean feat for a writer to make popular science or history compulsively readable (think Dava Sobel, Simon Singh, Carl Sagan, Pierre Berton, Simon Winchester or Martin Dugard, for example). Witze and Kanipe made Island on Fire eminently readable, interesting and lushly informative. But, for me, they just missed clearing that final hurdle to make the book a compelling page-turner. That said, I’ll withhold one star out of five but happily recommend it with both thumbs up to any potential reader who wants to increase their knowledge of the earth, where it’s been and where we might be headed. If we’re here when Yosemite blows, at least we’ll die happily knowing that we understand what’s going on!
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