A review by sonya1968
Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester

4.0

Simon Winchester is a great storyteller and this is a great story. I appreciate the wider context that Winchester brings to his books, the cultural and historical as well as the scientific. Because of the telegraph news of the explosion traveled around the world relatively quickly. And because of the fascination with emerging weather science, barometric readings were recorded all over the world (but strangely not temperature readings). I had no idea plate tectonics was confirmed in the 1960s. I thought it was much earlier. There's an interesting discussion about the political effects of the explosion, that it may have contributed to the anti-colonial sentiments that began to solidify. Winchester doesn't go into a lot of detail about the human destruction which I'm fine with, but a little more about the difficulty of rebuilding lives and the economy would have been helpful.

Winchester is also an enjoyable narrator. I loved the affectation of his voice when he read from scientific reports of the time.