Fascinating book about the the eruption of Mt Tambora and how it drastically altered the weather around the world. A lot of anecdotal accounts, and what was going on politically, socially and economically in the United States, Great Britain, France and much of Europe.
A well documented book. ( )

Both authors have PhD degrees, one in American History and one in meteorology, which helps to explain the depth of the research and the detail in writing. Then, once I figured out how the book was organized, reading became easier.

Mount Tambora exploded in April 1915 and the weather patterns around the world dramatically changed for nearly two years, but no one could figure out that the two events were related. Many theories for the extreme weather conditions were proposed, while crops failed and people were starving.

This is a part of history that I would have never learned about except that, as a genealogist, I had ancestors living in New England who migrated to Ohio during this timeframe and I'm always looking for the push/pull factors for migration. Previously I had no idea about the drought suffered in the United States during 1816--the year without a summer, I had assumed that the only reason for crop failure was the freezing temperatures during every month of the growing season. I also had no idea that Europe experienced the opposite precipitation extremes, rain and floods along with the cold temperatures, causing worse famine than in the United States.

After the describing the initial eruption, the authors used a timeline approach, following the United States and several European countries during specific time periods, then introduced several prominent people within those countries for whom information is available to tie the story together and better understand the local impact of the weather patterns. Or, as was sometimes the case, reveal the lack of both government and local understanding of the problems.

I appreciate the story and am glad I read the book, but it took a little longer to read and sometimes I felt like I was having to plough through a lot of detail. ( )

This was an interesting book that detailed the aftermath of the explosion of Mount Tambora and its consequences for the global climate. Interesting! ( )

Like Winchester's Krakatoa, The Year Without Summer reveals a year of dramatic global change long forgotten by history

In the tradition of Krakatoa, The World Without Us, and Guns, Germs and Steel comes a sweeping history of the year that became known as 18-hundred-and-froze-to-death. 1816 was a remarkable year—mostly for the fact that there was no summer. As a result of a volcanic eruption in Indonesia, weather patterns were disrupted worldwide for months, allowing for excessive rain, frost, and snowfall through much of the Northeastern U.S. and Europe in the summer of 1816.

In the U.S., the extraordinary weather produced food shortages, religious revivals, and extensive migration from New England to the Midwest. In Europe, the cold and wet summer led to famine, food riots, the transformation of stable communities into wandering beggars, and one of the worst typhus epidemics in history. 1816 was the year Frankenstein was written. It was also the year Turner painted his fiery sunsets. All of these things are linked to global climate change—something we are quite aware of now, but that was utterly mysterious to people in the nineteenth century, who concocted all sorts of reasons for such an ungenial season.

Making use of a wealth of source material and employing a compelling narrative approach featuring peasants and royalty, politicians, writers, and scientists, The Year Without Summer by William K. Klingaman and Nicholas P. Klingaman examines not only the climate change engendered by this event, but also its effects on politics, the economy, the arts, and social structures.

In April of 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted spectacularly, throwing immense amounts of ash and droplets of sulfuric acid into the atmosphere. By the next year, a good portion of the world was experiencing summer temperatures lower than any in living memory. Some areas were plagued by drought, others by seemingly perpetual torrential rains. Crops failed, and famine and unrest predictably followed. No one at the time knew what was causing this, although plenty of theories were put forward, and it wasn't until much later that the volcano's contribution was truly understood.

This book covers in some depth the effect of this weather on Europe and North America (with a lot of attention paid, in particular, to France, England, and the United States), including its influences on politics, economics, emigration, and literature. The writing is a bit dry, and it gets very, very repetitive, with endless, near-identical quotes from various local weather reports and news sources, in a way that feels more suitable for an academic tome than a supposedly popular work of historical non-fiction. And yet, it's rather compelling, nonetheless, and does leave one reflecting in interesting ways on the precariousness of the world and the highly contingent nature of history. ( )