-
Tambora
- The Eruption That Changed the World
- Narrated by: Tom Pile
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $24.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
When Indonesia's Mount Tambora erupted in 1815, it unleashed the most destructive wave of extreme weather the world has witnessed in thousands of years. The volcano's massive sulfate dust cloud enveloped the Earth, cooling temperatures and disrupting major weather systems for more than three years. Amid devastating storms, drought, and floods, communities worldwide endured famine, disease, and civil unrest on a catastrophic scale. On the eve of the bicentenary of the great eruption, Tambora tells the extraordinary story of the weather chaos it wrought, weaving the latest climate science with the social history of this frightening period to offer a cautionary tale about the potential tragic impacts of drastic climate change in our own century.
The year following Tambora's eruption became known as the "Year without a Summer," when weather anomalies in Europe and New England ruined crops, displaced millions, and spawned chaos and disease. Here, for the first time, Gillen D'Arcy Wood traces Tambora's full global and historical reach: How the volcano's three-year climate change regime initiated the first worldwide cholera pandemic, expanded opium markets in China, set the stage for Ireland's Great Famine, and plunged the United States into its first economic depression. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein's monster, inspired by Tambora's terrifying storms, embodied the fears and misery of global humanity during this transformative period, the most recent sustained climate crisis the world has faced.
Bringing the history of this planetary emergency grippingly to life, Tambora sheds light on the fragile interdependence of climate and human societies, and the threat a new era of extreme global weather poses to us all.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Krakatoa
- The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa - the name has since become a byword for a cataclysmic disaster - was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly 40,000 people. Beyond the purely physical horrors of an event that has only very recently been properly understood, the eruption changed the world in more ways than could possibly be imagined. Dust swirled round die planet for years, causing temperatures to plummet and sunsets to turn vivid with lurid and unsettling displays of light.
-
-
Great subject, great writing, great voice
- By rwise on 01-26-04
By: Simon Winchester
-
The Sea and Civilization
- A Maritime History of the World
- By: Lincoln Paine
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 29 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A monumental retelling of world history through the lens of maritime enterprise, revealing in breathtaking depth how people first came into contact with one another by ocean and river, lake and stream, and how goods, languages, religions, and entire cultures spread across and along the world's waterways, bringing together civilizations and defining what makes us most human.
-
-
Comprehensive
- By Than on 12-29-19
By: Lincoln Paine
-
Super Volcanoes
- What They Reveal About Earth and the Worlds Beyond
- By: Robin George Andrews
- Narrated by: Mike Cooper
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Super Volcanoes revels in the incomparable power of volcanic eruptions past and present, Earth-bound and otherwise, and explores how these eruptions reveal secrets about the worlds to which they belong. Science journalist and volcanologist Robin George Andrews describes the stunning ways in which volcanoes can sculpt the sea, land, and sky, and even influence the machinery that makes or breaks the existence of life.
-
-
Interesting and fun
- By Lin Waters on 12-11-21
-
When Humans Nearly Vanished
- The Catastrophic Explosion of the Toba Volcano
- By: Donald R. Prothero
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Some 73,000 years ago, the Mount Toba supervolcano in toda's Indonesia erupted, releasing the energy of a million tons of explosives. So much ash and debris was injected into the stratosphere that it partially blocked the sun's radiation and caused global temperatures to drop for a decade. In this book, Donald R. Prothero presents the controversial argument that the Toba catastrophe nearly wiped out the human race, leaving only about a thousand to ten thousand breeding pairs of humans worldwide.
-
-
A very special book
- By Scott Fitzsimmons on 02-02-19
-
London
- The Biography
- By: Peter Ackroyd
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 32 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
London: The Biography is the pinnacle of Peter Ackroyd's brilliant obsession with the eponymous city. In this unusual and engaging work, Ackroyd brings the listener through time into the city whose institutions and idiosyncrasies have permeated much of his works of fiction and nonfiction. Peter Ackroyd sees London as a living, breathing organism, with its own laws of growth and change.
-
-
Great Book
- By Joann on 01-04-21
By: Peter Ackroyd
-
The Napoleonic Wars
- By: Alexander Mikaberidze
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 35 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Napoleonic Wars saw fighting on an unprecedented scale in Europe and the Americas. It took the wealth of the British Empire, combined with the might of the continental armies, almost two decades to bring down one of the world's greatest military leaders and the empire that he had created. Napoleon's ultimate defeat was to determine the history of Europe for almost 100 years. From the frozen wastelands of Russia, through the brutal fighting in the Peninsula to the blood-soaked battlefield of Waterloo, this book tells the story of the dramatic rise and fall of the Napoleonic Empire.
-
-
No description of battles
- By John Gaston on 01-15-21
-
Krakatoa
- The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa - the name has since become a byword for a cataclysmic disaster - was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly 40,000 people. Beyond the purely physical horrors of an event that has only very recently been properly understood, the eruption changed the world in more ways than could possibly be imagined. Dust swirled round die planet for years, causing temperatures to plummet and sunsets to turn vivid with lurid and unsettling displays of light.
-
-
Great subject, great writing, great voice
- By rwise on 01-26-04
By: Simon Winchester
-
The Sea and Civilization
- A Maritime History of the World
- By: Lincoln Paine
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 29 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A monumental retelling of world history through the lens of maritime enterprise, revealing in breathtaking depth how people first came into contact with one another by ocean and river, lake and stream, and how goods, languages, religions, and entire cultures spread across and along the world's waterways, bringing together civilizations and defining what makes us most human.
-
-
Comprehensive
- By Than on 12-29-19
By: Lincoln Paine
-
Super Volcanoes
- What They Reveal About Earth and the Worlds Beyond
- By: Robin George Andrews
- Narrated by: Mike Cooper
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Super Volcanoes revels in the incomparable power of volcanic eruptions past and present, Earth-bound and otherwise, and explores how these eruptions reveal secrets about the worlds to which they belong. Science journalist and volcanologist Robin George Andrews describes the stunning ways in which volcanoes can sculpt the sea, land, and sky, and even influence the machinery that makes or breaks the existence of life.
-
-
Interesting and fun
- By Lin Waters on 12-11-21
-
When Humans Nearly Vanished
- The Catastrophic Explosion of the Toba Volcano
- By: Donald R. Prothero
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Some 73,000 years ago, the Mount Toba supervolcano in toda's Indonesia erupted, releasing the energy of a million tons of explosives. So much ash and debris was injected into the stratosphere that it partially blocked the sun's radiation and caused global temperatures to drop for a decade. In this book, Donald R. Prothero presents the controversial argument that the Toba catastrophe nearly wiped out the human race, leaving only about a thousand to ten thousand breeding pairs of humans worldwide.
-
-
A very special book
- By Scott Fitzsimmons on 02-02-19
-
London
- The Biography
- By: Peter Ackroyd
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 32 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
London: The Biography is the pinnacle of Peter Ackroyd's brilliant obsession with the eponymous city. In this unusual and engaging work, Ackroyd brings the listener through time into the city whose institutions and idiosyncrasies have permeated much of his works of fiction and nonfiction. Peter Ackroyd sees London as a living, breathing organism, with its own laws of growth and change.
-
-
Great Book
- By Joann on 01-04-21
By: Peter Ackroyd
-
The Napoleonic Wars
- By: Alexander Mikaberidze
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 35 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Napoleonic Wars saw fighting on an unprecedented scale in Europe and the Americas. It took the wealth of the British Empire, combined with the might of the continental armies, almost two decades to bring down one of the world's greatest military leaders and the empire that he had created. Napoleon's ultimate defeat was to determine the history of Europe for almost 100 years. From the frozen wastelands of Russia, through the brutal fighting in the Peninsula to the blood-soaked battlefield of Waterloo, this book tells the story of the dramatic rise and fall of the Napoleonic Empire.
-
-
No description of battles
- By John Gaston on 01-15-21
-
Otherlands
- A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds
- By: Thomas Halliday
- Narrated by: Adetomiwa Edun
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The past is past, but it does leave clues, and Thomas Halliday has used cutting-edge science to decipher them more completely than ever before. In Otherlands, Halliday makes sixteen fossil sites burst to life.
-
-
Great book brilliantly read
- By Dipam on 04-06-22
By: Thomas Halliday
-
The Story of China
- The Epic History of a World Power from the Middle Kingdom to Mao and the China Dream
- By: Michael Wood
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 20 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Michael Wood has travelled the length and breadth of China, the world's oldest civilization and longest lasting state, to tell a thrilling story of intense drama, fabulous creativity, and deep humanity that stretches back thousands of years.
-
-
Well researched, balanced, and informative
- By Chinmay Aladangady on 04-25-23
By: Michael Wood
-
Ghosts of the Tsunami
- Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone
- By: Richard Lloyd Parry
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On March 11, 2011, a powerful earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of northeast Japan. By the time the sea retreated, more than eighteen thousand people had been crushed, burned to death, or drowned. It was Japan’s greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It set off a national crisis and the meltdown of a nuclear power plant. And even after the immediate emergency had abated, the trauma of the disaster continued to express itself in bizarre and mysterious ways.
-
-
Riveting True Story You Didn't Hear On The News
- By Kathy in CA on 07-05-18
-
Jim Bridger
- Trailblazer of the American West
- By: Jerry Enzler
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Even among iconic frontiersmen like John C. Fremont, Kit Carson, and Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger stands out. A mountain man of the American West, straddling the fur trade era and the age of exploration, he lived the life legends are made of. Here, in a biography that finally gives this outsize character his due, Jerry Enzler takes this frontiersman's full measure for the first time—and tells a story that would do Jim Bridger proud.
-
-
Interesting
- By Jon Evans on 07-19-23
By: Jerry Enzler
-
A People’s Tragedy
- By: Orlando Figes
- Narrated by: Roger Davis
- Length: 47 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Opening with a panorama of Russian society, from the cloistered world of the Tsar to the brutal life of the peasants, A People’s Tragedy follows workers, soldiers, intellectuals and villagers as their world is consumed by revolution and then degenerates into violence and dictatorship. Drawing on vast original research, Figes conveys above all the shocking experience of the revolution for those who lived it, while providing the clearest and most cogent account of how and why it unfolded.
-
-
It would be 5 stars
- By Michael Polevoy on 01-31-19
By: Orlando Figes
-
The Great Quake
- How the Biggest Earthquake in North America Changed Our Understanding of the Planet
- By: Henry Fountain
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A riveting narrative about the biggest earthquake in North American recorded history - the 1964 Alaska earthquake that demolished the city of Valdez and swept away the island village of Chenega - and the geologist who hunted for clues to explain how and why it took place.
-
-
Fascinating to hear the full story
- By Debby A Davis on 08-18-17
By: Henry Fountain
-
The Rise and Reign of the Mammals
- A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us
- By: Steve Brusatte
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We humans are the inheritors of a dynasty that has reigned over the planet for nearly 66 million years, through fiery cataclysm and ice ages: the mammals. Our lineage includes saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths, armadillos the size of a car, cave bears three times the weight of a grizzly, clever scurriers that outlasted Tyrannosaurus rex, and even other types of humans, like Neanderthals.
-
-
Fantastic Book
- By Peter Jensen on 09-08-22
By: Steve Brusatte
-
Our First Civil War
- Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution
- By: H. W. Brands
- Narrated by: Steve Hendrickson
- Length: 16 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What causes people to forsake their country and take arms against it? What prompts their neighbors, hardly distinguishable in station or success, to defend that country against the rebels? That is the question H. W. Brands answers in his powerful new history of the American Revolution.
-
-
Not a fresh take on the Revolution
- By James on 01-05-22
By: H. W. Brands
-
The Worst Hard Time
- The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
- By: Timothy Egan
- Narrated by: Jacob York
- Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Timothy Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, he does equal justice to the human characters who become his heroes.
-
-
Excellent history ruined by Egan's bias & cynicism
- By Nathan on 03-21-23
By: Timothy Egan
-
Sea People
- The Puzzle of Polynesia
- By: Christina Thompson
- Narrated by: Susan Lyons
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A thrilling, intellectual detective story that looks deep into the past to uncover who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific, where they came from, how they got there, and how we know.
-
-
Long Lost History
- By Than on 04-19-19
-
1491
- New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
- By: Charles C. Mann
- Narrated by: Darrell Dennis
- Length: 16 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus' landing had crossed the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago; existed mainly in small nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas were, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last 30 years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong.
-
-
Exposes Non-Academic Audience to The Debate Between Ideas of Pre-Colombian America's
- By Christopher on 01-19-17
By: Charles C. Mann
-
Empire of Blue Water
- Captain Morgan's Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe that Ended the Outlaws' Bloody Reign
- By: Stephan Talty
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
He challenged the greatest empire on earth with a ragtag bunch of renegades and brought it to its knees. This is the real story of the pirates of the Caribbean. Henry Morgan, a 20-year-old Welshman, crossed the Atlantic in 1655, hell-bent on making his fortune. Over the next three decades, his exploits in the Caribbean became legendary. His daring attacks on the mighty Spanish empire on land and at sea determined the fates of kings and queens, and his victories helped shape the destiny of the New World.
-
-
Morbid Terrorists?
- By Jack on 11-11-08
By: Stephan Talty
Related to this topic
-
The Great Warming
- Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations
- By: Brian Fagan
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The history of the Great Warming of a half millennium ago suggests that we may yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives todayand our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the silent elephant in the room.
-
-
Good book but unpracticed, disjointed narration.
- By Paul on 09-12-10
By: Brian Fagan
-
The Fate of Rome
- Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire
- By: Kyle Harper
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Interweaving a grand historical narrative with cutting-edge climate science and genetic discoveries, Kyle Harper traces how the fate of Rome was decided not just by emperors, soldiers, and barbarians but also by volcanic eruptions, solar cycles, climate instability, and devastating viruses and bacteria. He takes listeners from Rome's pinnacle in the second century, when the empire seemed an invincible superpower, to its unraveling by the seventh century, when Rome was politically fragmented and materially depleted.
-
-
Interesting and worthwhile
- By B. Coleman on 06-15-19
By: Kyle Harper
-
Don't Know Much About Geography: Revised and Updated Edition
- Everything You Need to Know About the World But Never Learned, Revised and Updated
- By: Kenneth C. Davis
- Narrated by: Kenneth C. Davis, Joe Ochman, Mark Bramhall, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kenneth C. Davis, author of Don't Know Much About® History, Don't Know Much About the Civil War and Don't Know Much About the Bible, turns his inimitable wit and wide-ranging knowledge to the subject of geography, and proves once and for all that there is a lot more to it than labeling countries on a map. From often amusing perceptions people have had through the ages about the world and the universe to the changing map of today, Davis shows how geography is really a great crossroad of many fields: biology, meteorology, astronomy, history, economics, and even politics.
-
-
Errors
- By The Product Owner on 08-29-15
By: Kenneth C. Davis
-
Rain
- A Natural and Cultural History
- By: Cynthia Barnett
- Narrated by: Christina Traister
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is elemental, mysterious, precious, destructive. It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of all the world's water. Yet this is the first audiobook to tell the story of rain.
-
-
Mostly a cultural history
- By serine on 02-10-16
By: Cynthia Barnett
-
Krakatoa
- The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa - the name has since become a byword for a cataclysmic disaster - was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly 40,000 people. Beyond the purely physical horrors of an event that has only very recently been properly understood, the eruption changed the world in more ways than could possibly be imagined. Dust swirled round die planet for years, causing temperatures to plummet and sunsets to turn vivid with lurid and unsettling displays of light.
-
-
Great subject, great writing, great voice
- By rwise on 01-26-04
By: Simon Winchester
-
Island on Fire
- The Extraordinary Story of a Forgotten Volcano That Changed the World
- By: Alexandra Witze, Jeff Kanipe
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Laki is Iceland's largest volcano - and its most fearsome. Its eruption in 1783 is one of history's great untold natural disasters. Spewing out sun-blocking ash and then a poisonous fog for eight long months, the effects of the eruption lingered across the world for years. It caused the deaths of people as far away as the Nile and created catastrophic conditions throughout Europe.
-
-
Interesting and Pertinent Topic!
- By Catherine Puma on 01-23-22
By: Alexandra Witze, and others
-
The Great Warming
- Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations
- By: Brian Fagan
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The history of the Great Warming of a half millennium ago suggests that we may yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives todayand our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the silent elephant in the room.
-
-
Good book but unpracticed, disjointed narration.
- By Paul on 09-12-10
By: Brian Fagan
-
The Fate of Rome
- Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire
- By: Kyle Harper
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Interweaving a grand historical narrative with cutting-edge climate science and genetic discoveries, Kyle Harper traces how the fate of Rome was decided not just by emperors, soldiers, and barbarians but also by volcanic eruptions, solar cycles, climate instability, and devastating viruses and bacteria. He takes listeners from Rome's pinnacle in the second century, when the empire seemed an invincible superpower, to its unraveling by the seventh century, when Rome was politically fragmented and materially depleted.
-
-
Interesting and worthwhile
- By B. Coleman on 06-15-19
By: Kyle Harper
-
Don't Know Much About Geography: Revised and Updated Edition
- Everything You Need to Know About the World But Never Learned, Revised and Updated
- By: Kenneth C. Davis
- Narrated by: Kenneth C. Davis, Joe Ochman, Mark Bramhall, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kenneth C. Davis, author of Don't Know Much About® History, Don't Know Much About the Civil War and Don't Know Much About the Bible, turns his inimitable wit and wide-ranging knowledge to the subject of geography, and proves once and for all that there is a lot more to it than labeling countries on a map. From often amusing perceptions people have had through the ages about the world and the universe to the changing map of today, Davis shows how geography is really a great crossroad of many fields: biology, meteorology, astronomy, history, economics, and even politics.
-
-
Errors
- By The Product Owner on 08-29-15
By: Kenneth C. Davis
-
Rain
- A Natural and Cultural History
- By: Cynthia Barnett
- Narrated by: Christina Traister
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is elemental, mysterious, precious, destructive. It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of all the world's water. Yet this is the first audiobook to tell the story of rain.
-
-
Mostly a cultural history
- By serine on 02-10-16
By: Cynthia Barnett
-
Krakatoa
- The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa - the name has since become a byword for a cataclysmic disaster - was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly 40,000 people. Beyond the purely physical horrors of an event that has only very recently been properly understood, the eruption changed the world in more ways than could possibly be imagined. Dust swirled round die planet for years, causing temperatures to plummet and sunsets to turn vivid with lurid and unsettling displays of light.
-
-
Great subject, great writing, great voice
- By rwise on 01-26-04
By: Simon Winchester
-
Island on Fire
- The Extraordinary Story of a Forgotten Volcano That Changed the World
- By: Alexandra Witze, Jeff Kanipe
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Laki is Iceland's largest volcano - and its most fearsome. Its eruption in 1783 is one of history's great untold natural disasters. Spewing out sun-blocking ash and then a poisonous fog for eight long months, the effects of the eruption lingered across the world for years. It caused the deaths of people as far away as the Nile and created catastrophic conditions throughout Europe.
-
-
Interesting and Pertinent Topic!
- By Catherine Puma on 01-23-22
By: Alexandra Witze, and others
-
Late Victorian Holocausts
- El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
- By: Mike Davis
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Examining a series of El Niño-induced droughts and the famines that they spawned around the globe in the last third of the 19th century, Mike Davis discloses the intimate, baleful relationship between imperial arrogance and natural incident that combined to produce some of the worst tragedies in human history. Late Victorian Holocausts focuses on three zones of drought and subsequent famine: India, Northern China, and Northeastern Brazil.
-
-
Mike Davis on Audible!
- By Nathan D. Backlund on 09-02-17
By: Mike Davis
-
A Crack in the Edge of the World
- America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
San Francisco Earthquake that leveled a city symbolic of America's relentless western expansion. Simon Winchester has also fashioned an enthralling and informative informative look at the tumultuous subterranean world that produces earthquakes, the planet's most sudden and destructive force. In the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, San Francisco and a string of towns to its north-northwest and the south-southeast were overcome by an enormous shaking that was compounded by the violent shocks of an earthquake, registering 8.25 on the Richter scale.
-
-
7 Hours and 45 minutes . . .
- By Tim on 12-09-05
By: Simon Winchester
-
1493
- Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
- By: Charles C. Mann
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 17 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driven by the economic goal of establishing trade with China, he accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans.
-
-
Fascinating Mindbending History.
- By Betsy Powel on 12-19-11
By: Charles C. Mann
-
1491
- New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
- By: Charles C. Mann
- Narrated by: Darrell Dennis
- Length: 16 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus' landing had crossed the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago; existed mainly in small nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas were, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last 30 years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong.
-
-
Exposes Non-Academic Audience to The Debate Between Ideas of Pre-Colombian America's
- By Christopher on 01-19-17
By: Charles C. Mann
-
18 Miles
- The Epic Drama of Our Atmosphere and Its Weather
- By: Christopher Dewdney
- Narrated by: Angelo Di Loreto
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We live at the bottom of an ocean of air - 5,200 million million tons, to be exact. It sounds like a lot, but Earth’s atmosphere is smeared onto its surface in an alarmingly thin layer - 99 percent contained within 18 miles. Yet, within this fragile margin lies a magnificent realm - at once gorgeous, terrifying, capricious, and elusive. With his keen eye for identifying and uniting seemingly unrelated events, Chris Dewdney reveals to us the invisible rivers in the sky that affect how our weather works and the structure of clouds and storms and seasons, the rollercoaster of climate.
-
-
10% science, 90% other stuff
- By Daniel W. Fox, Jr. on 10-09-20
-
The Graves Are Walking
- The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People
- By: John Kelly
- Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
- Length: 13 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It started in 1845 and lasted six years. Before it was over, more than one million men, women, and children starved to death and another million fled the country. Measured in terms of mortality, the Great Irish Potato Famine was one of the worst disasters in the 19th century-it claimed twice as many lives as the American Civil War. A perfect storm of bacterial infection, political greed, and religious intolerance sparked this catastrophe.
-
-
Unforgettable, Haunting, and a Compelling Warning
- By Carole T. on 08-22-12
By: John Kelly
-
Artificial Intelligence
- Modern Magic or Dangerous Future?
- By: Yorick Wilks
- Narrated by: Hannibal Hills
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
AI expert Yorick Wilks takes a journey through the history of artificial intelligence up to the present day, examining its origins, controversies, and achievements, as well as looking into just how it works. He also considers the future, assessing whether these technologies could menace our way of life and how we are all likely to benefit from AI applications in the years to come.
By: Yorick Wilks
-
Nature's Mutiny
- How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present
- By: Philipp Blom
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Although hints of a crisis appeared as early as the 1570s, the temperature by the end of the 16th century plummeted so drastically that Mediterranean harbors were covered with ice, birds literally dropped out of the sky, and "frost fairs" were erected on a frozen Thames - with kiosks, taverns, and even brothels that become a semi-permanent part of the city. Recounting the deep legacy and far-ranging consequences of this "Little Ice Age", acclaimed historian Philipp Blom reveals how the European landscape had subtly, but ineradicably, changed by the mid-17th century.
-
-
Starts On Track; End Becomes Ideological Rant
- By Danioton on 06-07-20
By: Philipp Blom
-
The Discovery of France
- A Historical Geography
- By: Graham Robb
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A narrative of exploration - full of strange landscapes and even stranger inhabitants - that explains the enduring fascination of France. While Gustave Eiffel was changing the skyline of Paris, large parts of France were still terra incognita. Even in the age of railways and newspapers, France was a land of ancient tribal divisions, prehistoric communication networks, and pre-Christian beliefs. French itself was a minority language.
-
-
Great history of the cultural formation of France
- By Scotty on 07-31-21
By: Graham Robb
-
A Shorter History of Australia
- By: Geoffrey Blainey
- Narrated by: Humphrey Bower
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After a lifetime of research and debate on Australian and international history, Geoffrey Blainey is well-placed to introduce us to the people who have played a part and to guide us through the events which have created the Australian identity: the mania for spectator sport, the suspicion of the tall poppy, the rivalries of Catholic and Protestant, Sydney and Melbourne, new and old homelands, the conflicts of war abroad and race at home, the importance of technology, the recognition of our Aboriginal past and Native Title.
-
-
Just couldn't stand the paternalism
- By Matthew on 04-02-14
By: Geoffrey Blainey
-
Storm Kings
- The Untold History of America's First Tornado Chasers
- By: Lee Sandlin
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Isaac's Storm meets The Age of Wonder in Lee Sandlin's Storm Kings, a riveting tale of the weather's most vicious monster - the super cell tornado - that recreates the origins of meteorology, and the quirky, pioneering, weather-obsessed scientists who helped change America.
-
-
American Meteorological History at its best
- By Leslye Sinn on 10-23-16
By: Lee Sandlin
-
Dark Winter
- How the Sun Is Causing a 30-Year Cold Spell
- By: John L. Casey
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Climate change has been a perplexing problem for years. Casey's research into the Sun's activity, which began almost a decade ago, resulted in discovery of a solar cycle that is now reversing from its global warming phase to that of dangerous global cooling for the next 30 years or more. This new cold climate will dramatically impact the world's citizens.
-
-
Global Warming Is A Hoax
- By Catamount on 11-20-17
By: John L. Casey
What listeners say about Tambora
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Bob
- 07-19-17
very useful information and quite insightful for
very useful information and quite insightful in regards to current climate issues helps one to understand the effects any volcanic eruption can have on the earth for a very long time
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- thebladerunner
- 04-25-15
It's not what you think
What did you like best about Tambora? What did you like least?
It is interesting to hear about this major volcanic eruption from 200 years ago and its startling affect on world events. The reader however sounds like he is reciting a zip code directory. That's not a bad thing overall because the book talks very little about the actual eruption and subsequent effects in the local area. The book becomes a depressing advertisement for the problems of current global warming.
What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)
The ending comes about in the first two chapters. The rest of the book is a long explanation of all the similar weather events that occurred the 3 years following the eruption. There were some interesting and probable inferences with world health conditions but again very little about the actual eruption and the local area. This is to be expected because it occurred at a time and place with little opportunity to record the event. I was hoping for more information that may have been discovered since the eruption. There was a little in one chapter.
What do you think the narrator could have done better?
It seemed to be a very monotone recitation. Perhaps a different narrator with more emotion would have made the book more enjoyable. As it was I had to force myself to continue to listen to it even though I was intellectually curious about the topic.
Did Tambora inspire you to do anything?
Yes, I won't erupt next time I'm in south east Asia.
Any additional comments?
I was hopeful about this book but ended up being a bit disappointed. I would encourage an interested person to listen to the whole preview and decide if you can handle listening to an entire book that sounds the same.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Admiralu
- 01-06-19
A Mishmash of Science vs Cultural Impact
This book was not what I expected. It does relay the details of the Tambora volcano explosion and aftermath, but it is concerned mostly with a social impact. There are explanations of the science, but far too many side trips that include poetry verses or artistic works of the respective period. Save it for another book. This was difficult to get through and at times boring as hell. There were bright spots. When sticking to the main narrative, it could be interesting, but this book comes as a mishmash, trying to be too many things to too many people. I read this book using immersion reading while listening to the audiobook. The narrator's voice was far too soft and monotone as to put you to sleep.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jessica G Schairer
- 06-25-16
Tour de force
I listened to this twice. He covers all aspects of the local and global effects clearly from the geological to famine and disease and to the literary.
Tamboura is hugely important in an era of permanent global climate change. We need to understand the global effects of what we are doing to plan for the future.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Mike, a Kindle User
- 08-30-17
Social commentary on eruption's effects
Had this book been marketed more as a social commentary on SOME of the effects of the eruption of Tambora, I would give it a much higher rating. If you wish to listen or read for hours about Mary Shelley and the writing of Frankenstein, this is your book. but there is very little discussion of the actual eruption itself, how it happened, why it happened, even WHERE it happened. Simon Winchester's Krakatoa book is far superior in that respect, dealing with all the facets of the eruption itself. The narrator also seems to whisper the entire time, with very little emotional inflection or variance in tones. I found myself waiting somewhat desperately for the end of the book by the time he started narrating about the Irish famines and effects, but forced myself to finish it. All in all, while I wouldn't recommend this book, nor would I recommend against it. Very neutral.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- EntertainmentLover
- 07-08-17
Tambora
I liked the detail of this massive eruption and it how the writer tied it into how it changed the world since no one had ever taken the time to connect the dots before.
I would recommend to anyone curious about major eruptions in human history and all history buffs in general.
I gave it 4 stars because while I did love it. I want more. Such as I had seen a comparison elsewhere of Krakatoa being like the explosion of 16,000 atomic bombs and the energy released from Tambora was equivalent to 2.2 million atomic bombs.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 09-04-16
An unexpected pleasure
Any additional comments?
I didn't really know what to expect from this book. What I discovered was an interesting and engaging story of the global impacts following the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815. This book is not just about the actual eruption, which was the largest in recent history, but about the subsequent global weather impacts that was connected to a cholera outbreak, political upheaval, famine. It was the links to things such as literature (for example Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein") that made this book a truly remarkable expose on the existence of global connections even two centuries ago. In short, this book was fascinating and interesting, even if it was unexpected.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Aureo Lustosa Guerios Neto
- 04-21-18
Fascinating and learned study
This book discusses the eruption of Tambora and its consequences drawing from a variety of fields: cultural history, literary studies, climate sciences, geology and epidemiology. It is profoundly original and a trully fascinating piece of environmental history and ecocriticism.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Donna
- 05-21-15
Don't bother
Would you try another book from Gillen D'Arcy Wood and/or Tom Pile?
No. The narration was even worse then the book.
What was most disappointing about Gillen D'Arcy Wood’s story?
I was really excited about this book and it's the kind of topic that interests me. What a disappointment. Boring, boring, boring, boring.
What didn’t you like about Tom Pile’s performance?
Slow and flat.
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
Disappointment
Any additional comments?
I rarely write reviews but this book was so bad I felt I needed to warn other Audible listeners. At the very least listen to the sample before purchasing.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful