Out of the Crater: Chronicles of a Volcanologist Book

The study of volcanoes is dangerously attractive. For volcanoes are, as Richard Fisher, a well-known American volcanologist, writes "geological systems operating in real time". In the last decade alone, several professionals have been killed while studying these unpredictable reminders of Earth's underlying dynamism. Millions of people currently live near active volcanoes, such as the Italian inhabitants of Naples overshadowed by Vesuvius. There is a pressing need, as Fisher reminds us, to find out more about volcanic processes. Out of the Crater chronicles Fisher's globetrotting to volcanoes alive and dead in the pursuit of his research. He presents, for the general reader, a chatty and informative series of eminently readable vignettes of his research into the blast processes and products of volcanoes. His pyrotechnical career started, quite unwittingly, on Monday July 1, 1946, when, as a national serviceman, he witnessed the blast produced by the underwater explosion of an atom bomb at Bikini Atoll. The academic travelogue ends in southern Italy in the late eighties, just before his retirement from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Fisher's important work has helped the understanding of the most dangerous of all volcanic processes--pyroclastic flows and surges. These are catastrophic, avalanche-like flows of hot gas and debris that can blast across vast areas at hundreds of miles an hour, generating sufficient impetus and power to climb over mountains and destroy buildings, and, inevitably, kill people. --Douglas PalmerRead More