Richard Hamblyn

[This is a review I wrote in 2009]

** Four devastating natural disasters narrated largely from eye-witness accounts**

A narration of four events that changed the world, all natural disasters. Each disaster chosen corresponds to one of the four natural elements - earth, air, fire, water - showing how volatile each of these elements can be. Richard Hamblyn has chosen the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, the European Air Panic of 1783 (the unusual weather phenomena and strange appearance of the skies), the Krakatoa volcanic eruption of 1883, and the Hilo Tsunami of 1946. His preface about the most devastating Tsunami in recorded history, the Boxing Day disaster in 2004 is a stark reminder of our vulnerability to natural disasters at any time and how important it is that we as humans learn from what our planet is telling us and learn from any past mistakes in dealing with these catastrophic events.

Part history, part history of science and geology, reading Richard Hamblyn's narration is a humbling experience. Each case history is drawn primarily from eye-witness accounts which lends a very human perspective to these natural disasters and enhances the reminder that any one of these events could take place again. A very readable and thought-provoking thesis.… (mere)

This isn't a coffee-table book of the prettiest/most dramatic cloud pictures available. Instead it is a book that explains the classifications of clouds used by the global meteorological community, with the photographs acting primarily as illustrations. As such they are very good - and some of them actually are pretty or dramatic. The explanations, with the aid of the glossary are probably accessible to most people, definitely so if the reader has prior familiarity with basic amateur meteorology, including terms like troposphere, cold front, depression, convection, etc. And indeed the text will give people who need to be able to make short-term weather forecasts based only on information directly observable by their senses (e.g. hikers/mountaineers) much useful knowledge. At the end there is a section on rare cloud types and optical atmospheric phenomena that can and does indulge the urge towards the dramatic more than the main body of the book and a brief essay on clouds in relation to anthopogenic climate change, a topic of great complexity and importance that is also difficult to study.

Given its aims, this is a very good book.… (mere)