Mountains of Fire: The Menace, Meaning, and Magic of Volcanoes
Autor Clive Oppenheimeren Limba Engleză Hardback – 26 sep 2023
In Mountains of Fire, Clive Oppenheimer invites readers to stand with him in the shadow of an active volcano. Whether he is scaling majestic summits, listening to hissing lava at the crater’s edge, or hunting for the far-flung ashes from Earth’s greatest eruptions, Oppenheimer is an ideal guide, offering readers the chance to tag along on the daring, seemingly-impossible journeys of a volcanologist.
In his eventful career as a volcanologist and filmmaker, Oppenheimer has studied volcanoes around the world. He has worked with scientists in North Korea to study Mount Paektu, a volcano name sung in national anthems on both sides of the Demilitarized Zone. He has crossed the Sahara to reach the fabled Tiéroko volcano in the Tibesti Mountains of Chad. He spent months camped atop Antarctica’s most active volcano, Mount Erebus, to record the pulse of its lava lake.
Mountains of Fire reveals how volcanic activity is entangled with our climate and environment, as well as our economy, politics, culture, and beliefs. These adventures and investigations make clear the dual purpose of volcanology—both to understand volcanoes for science’s sake and to serve the communities endangered and entranced by these mountains of fire.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780226826349
ISBN-10: 0226826341
Pagini: 352
Ilustrații: 20 color plates, 15 halftones
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 43 mm
Greutate: 0.66 kg
Ediția:First Edition
Editura: University of Chicago Press
Colecția University of Chicago Press
ISBN-10: 0226826341
Pagini: 352
Ilustrații: 20 color plates, 15 halftones
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 43 mm
Greutate: 0.66 kg
Ediția:First Edition
Editura: University of Chicago Press
Colecția University of Chicago Press
Notă biografică
Clive Oppenheimer is a volcanologist and filmmaker who has conducted fieldwork around the world. He is professor of volcanology at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Eruptions That Shook the World, and he has made two documentary features with Werner Herzog, Into the Inferno and Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds.
Extras
Grains of ash are dropping from the sky after a piercing detonation; they tinkle on my rucksack. Several large lava bombs blaze high above the crater, but fall back into the bowl-shaped depression, whose inner walls are striped with bands of cinders and rubble. At the bottom are two pits – one exhales a dusty smoke, but sometimes a much thicker brown cloud billows out silently to unfurl then dissipate across the larger, magma-filled vent, whose fumes are blue-tinged.
Trade winds sweep ash off the outer crater rim behind me like sand off a dune, showering the grey plain below, which stretches to a tract of lime- and emerald-green scrub and bush. The humid climate does a good job of confining the volcano’s flagrant footprint. Ahead, beyond the crater, the South Pacific spans half the horizon, from silver under the sun to hazy blue.
Another deafening volley! I sense the heat on my face this time as lava dances up from the sloshing maw with a roar like the full thrust of jet engines – I feel it in my chest and through my feet. The crater fills with a wreath of sulphurous fumes; they spill out, making acid tears in my eyes. More ash prickles my skin. The experience is dynamic, elemental, mesmerising; it assails all the senses at once.
Now the fumes have thickened and I can no longer see where the bombs are flying. I turn off the spectrometer I’ve been using to measure gas emissions, and start heading back to my lodge in the forest. It’s better to not sacrifice oneself for one’s art.
Volcanoes get a bad press. They are most in the public eye when tourists have been assailed by lava projectiles, neighbourhoods buried beneath pyroclastic flows, populous shorelines ravaged by tsunamis, or planes grounded owing to the ash forecast. But volcanoes mean more than menace and calamity. Dramatic and traumatic as their outbursts can be, most volcanoes, most of the time, are tranquil mountains with diverse microclimates and habitats, and valuable mineral and geothermal resources. If we think of the places where humans have long lived in the shadows of volcanoes, the volcanoes were almost invariably there first. Like our parents, they’ve led whole lives before we get to know them. They are visual anchors in our landscapes and paint the sky with their plumage; they are supernatural realms; and they can turn the world’s weather on its head. Even when their wild days are long past and their flames forever extinguished, their eroded landforms still enliven our skylines and invite outdoor adventure. Wherever we live on the planet, they are more a part of our lives than most people realise.
Volcanoes loom at a thrilling crossroads of nature, spirit, climate, geology, technology, society and culture. They play with time – stretching it over a geological epoch, yet able to shapeshift and change everything in the blink of an eye. As portals, they allow us to trace story and memory through deep time and back again.
As a volcanologist, I have dedicated my career to observing simmering craters, often at very close quarters, with a view to revealing their secrets. I’ve followed in the footsteps of pioneers like the American geologist, Thomas Jaggar, who established the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory in 1912. I love his description of geology being the ‘science of the dreamland of the earth’s interior’, and much of my work has involved recording phenomena at the mouths of volcanoes to help us understand their anatomy and physiology, to visualise their unseen lungs and alimentary tracts. The truth is, I spend a lot of my time imagining the underworld, and comparing the quirks and frolics of different volcanoes. They never asked for an advocate but I am not alone in seeking to translate the language of these sonorous mountains for a wider audience.
Volcanoes are hard to ignore, especially if you live near one. We have probably admired and feared them ever since our species evolved in the shadows of Kilimanjaro and other fi re mountains of eastern Africa, a few hundred thousand years ago. Given their sonic and visual spectacle, even between eruptions, it seems certain the ancestors would have sought to interpret their omens. But when did the more systematic study of volcanoes begin? Whose shoulders have I stood on in hope of seeing further? Historians of science might well diff er on its origins, but I trace volcanology’s first whispers back to the period when the term volcano was coined, and to the man whose careful observations would establish a template for centuries of colonial exploration (and exploitation): Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés.
Trade winds sweep ash off the outer crater rim behind me like sand off a dune, showering the grey plain below, which stretches to a tract of lime- and emerald-green scrub and bush. The humid climate does a good job of confining the volcano’s flagrant footprint. Ahead, beyond the crater, the South Pacific spans half the horizon, from silver under the sun to hazy blue.
Another deafening volley! I sense the heat on my face this time as lava dances up from the sloshing maw with a roar like the full thrust of jet engines – I feel it in my chest and through my feet. The crater fills with a wreath of sulphurous fumes; they spill out, making acid tears in my eyes. More ash prickles my skin. The experience is dynamic, elemental, mesmerising; it assails all the senses at once.
Now the fumes have thickened and I can no longer see where the bombs are flying. I turn off the spectrometer I’ve been using to measure gas emissions, and start heading back to my lodge in the forest. It’s better to not sacrifice oneself for one’s art.
Volcanoes get a bad press. They are most in the public eye when tourists have been assailed by lava projectiles, neighbourhoods buried beneath pyroclastic flows, populous shorelines ravaged by tsunamis, or planes grounded owing to the ash forecast. But volcanoes mean more than menace and calamity. Dramatic and traumatic as their outbursts can be, most volcanoes, most of the time, are tranquil mountains with diverse microclimates and habitats, and valuable mineral and geothermal resources. If we think of the places where humans have long lived in the shadows of volcanoes, the volcanoes were almost invariably there first. Like our parents, they’ve led whole lives before we get to know them. They are visual anchors in our landscapes and paint the sky with their plumage; they are supernatural realms; and they can turn the world’s weather on its head. Even when their wild days are long past and their flames forever extinguished, their eroded landforms still enliven our skylines and invite outdoor adventure. Wherever we live on the planet, they are more a part of our lives than most people realise.
Volcanoes loom at a thrilling crossroads of nature, spirit, climate, geology, technology, society and culture. They play with time – stretching it over a geological epoch, yet able to shapeshift and change everything in the blink of an eye. As portals, they allow us to trace story and memory through deep time and back again.
As a volcanologist, I have dedicated my career to observing simmering craters, often at very close quarters, with a view to revealing their secrets. I’ve followed in the footsteps of pioneers like the American geologist, Thomas Jaggar, who established the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory in 1912. I love his description of geology being the ‘science of the dreamland of the earth’s interior’, and much of my work has involved recording phenomena at the mouths of volcanoes to help us understand their anatomy and physiology, to visualise their unseen lungs and alimentary tracts. The truth is, I spend a lot of my time imagining the underworld, and comparing the quirks and frolics of different volcanoes. They never asked for an advocate but I am not alone in seeking to translate the language of these sonorous mountains for a wider audience.
Volcanoes are hard to ignore, especially if you live near one. We have probably admired and feared them ever since our species evolved in the shadows of Kilimanjaro and other fi re mountains of eastern Africa, a few hundred thousand years ago. Given their sonic and visual spectacle, even between eruptions, it seems certain the ancestors would have sought to interpret their omens. But when did the more systematic study of volcanoes begin? Whose shoulders have I stood on in hope of seeing further? Historians of science might well diff er on its origins, but I trace volcanology’s first whispers back to the period when the term volcano was coined, and to the man whose careful observations would establish a template for centuries of colonial exploration (and exploitation): Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés.
Cuprins
Dreamland of the Living Earth
Land of God
What Upsets Volcanoes?
Emerald Isle
Night Market of the Ghosts
White Mountain, Heaven Lake
Lava Floods and Hurtling Flames
Red Sea, Black Gold
Water Tower of the Sahara
Flame in a Sea of Gold
The Volcano and You
Acknowledgements
Notes
Index
Land of God
What Upsets Volcanoes?
Emerald Isle
Night Market of the Ghosts
White Mountain, Heaven Lake
Lava Floods and Hurtling Flames
Red Sea, Black Gold
Water Tower of the Sahara
Flame in a Sea of Gold
The Volcano and You
Acknowledgements
Notes
Index
Recenzii
“Mr. Oppenheimer is at his best when discussing how volcanoes are integral parts of nature’s vast, involuted networks of sky, land, oceans and subterranean regions.”
"University of Cambridge geologist Oppenheimer weaves together the history of volcanology with tales from his own work. . . The fervent prose captures the force and excitement of Oppenheimer’s subject, and the enlightening science is bolstered by fascinating insights into volcanoes’ role in myth. . . This will blow readers away."
“Readers will marvel at Oppenheimer’s close calls, risky research, and elegant writing style that delightfully weaves his perilous excursions with exacting science and rich ethnography.”
“Oppenheimer recounts a life spent studying volcanoes up close. He is an extraordinary individual who somehow finds serenity in the chaos at a volcano’s crater. . . . A tale of gripping adventure, undertaken in the constant shadow of death by volcanic mishap, appalling weather, lawlessness, or warfare.”
“Beautiful. Mountains of Fire is bursting with poetry, with storytelling. Clive is one of the rarest of men driven by nomadism, courage, and curiosity. What he studies, volcanic eruptions, are in the rank of things that are mighty, grave, and great.”
"I absolutely loved this book—it's so full of passion, wonderment, philosophy, anthropology and most of all volcanoes! It ignited my mind and delighted my imagination. I loved the deep and poignant connections between history, meaning and people, but it’s Clive Oppenheimer’s dazzling charisma and thrilling experiences that infuse this book with an energy befitting our planet’s most powerful force."
"Through a global tour of some of the world’s most fascinating volcanoes, Oppenheimer highlights the scientific insights from, and social impacts of, various eruptions. From North Korea to Antarctica to the Caribbean, he brings the reader along with extraordinary access onto the very flanks of volcanoes. Oppenheimer’s deep knowledge of these mountains of fire, combined with his eye for detail and his deep respect for those living alongside volcanoes, yields a thoroughly delightful and accessible exploration of these geological wonders."
“Witty, precise, evocative—Clive Oppenheimer is a beautiful writer and spectacular scholar. He guides us safely through the smelly, noisy blast furnaces of volcanic craters and lava flows. Mountains of Fire tells the story of a volcano doctor who measures the temperature and chemical compounds in volcanic ‘breath’ while recounting the history, adventures, and spirituality surrounding these wonders of the world.”
"A fantastic account of the power and importance of volcanoes to history. Clive Oppenheimer takes us on a wonderful tour of some of the world's best and least known volcanoes in a book that will make all readers want to become volcanologists."
"Breathtaking. Weaving together geology, history, culture with dramatic personal adventure, Clive Oppenheimer takes us deep into the beating heart of our planet."
"Thrilling! An explosive account of the inner lives of volcanoes, and how they have touched our lives through history. Adventurous, gripping science writing at its very best."
"An engrossing, richly detailed journey into the mysterious world of volcanos and volcano enthusiasts. Clive Oppenheimer's passion for his subject begins in the realm of science and ends with the human soul."
"Oppenheimer conjures up volcanoes with science and humanity. Fired by his and others’ fieldwork at the crater’s edge, his appealing book is grounded in the reasoning of thinkers far from the flames and lava."
“What the French adventurer Jacques Cousteau was to the hidden world under our seas, Oppenheimer is to the hidden, molten world bubbling under our feet. Werner Herzog, the German art-house documentary maker, has even suggested he should be the BBC’s successor to David Attenborough.”
“We can’t all travel the globe to risk our lives at the crater’s edge, but we have Oppenheimer’s prose to get us nearly there.”
“A billion people live within 50 miles of [an active volcano], and our chances of surviving eruptions depend on others risking their lives to understand them. It’s an excellent thing that scientists like Oppenheimer exist to pursue such a noble cause.”
“Being a volcanologist demands a quiverful of skills. You need to be in command of multiple branches of science, including geophysics, geochemistry, and seismology. But you must also understand people living near volcanoes, for whom they are sacred places, homes to ancestors, sites of miracles, mountains where God’s intervention in human affairs is made manifest in ash, fumes, and flame. . . . Perhaps one final attribute of a volcanologist is that he should be a good storyteller. Oppenheimer is better than good. This is terrific.”
“Oppenheimer has spent 13 seasons—cumulatively an entire year of his life—living near the summit of Mount Erebus. In Mountains of Fire he regales readers with gripping stories of his travels, as well as those of adventurers past. He does not just describe what the volcanoes look like, but how they feel and what they mean to the people who encounter them. . . . Mountains of Fire is a love letter to volcanoes and an investigation into all the ways that they have and continue to sustain humanity—spiritually and scientifically.”
Descriere
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A thrilling journey to the planet's most extreme places with world-famous volcanologist Professor Clive Oppenheimer.
A thrilling journey to the planet's most extreme places with world-famous volcanologist Professor Clive Oppenheimer.