Tambora
The Eruption That Changed the World
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Narrated by:
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Tom Pile
About this listen
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.
Download the accompanying reference guide.©2014 Princeton University Press (P)2014 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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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.
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Fascinating Mindbending History.
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By: Charles C. Mann
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1491
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- By: Charles C. Mann
- Narrated by: Darrell Dennis
- Length: 16 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Exposes Non-Academic Audience to The Debate Between Ideas of Pre-Colombian America's
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18 Miles
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- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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10% science, 90% other stuff
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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
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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.
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Unforgettable, Haunting, and a Compelling Warning
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Artificial Intelligence
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- Narrated by: Hannibal Hills
- Length: 5 hrs
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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.
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- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Starts On Track; End Becomes Ideological Rant
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- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Great history of the cultural formation of France
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A Shorter History of Australia
- By: Geoffrey Blainey
- Narrated by: Humphrey Bower
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Just couldn't stand the paternalism
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Storm Kings
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- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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American Meteorological History at its best
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- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Global Warming Is A Hoax
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By: John L. Casey
What listeners say about Tambora
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- 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
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1 person found this helpful
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- 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.
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3 people found this helpful
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- 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.
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2 people found this helpful
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- 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.
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3 people found this helpful
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- 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.
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1 person found this helpful
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- 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.
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1 person found this helpful
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- 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.
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5 people found this helpful
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- 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.
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1 person found this helpful
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- 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.
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1 person found this helpful