MOUNTAIN OF FIRE

A flow of insight into the lore and geology of select volcanos…on this world and beyond.

Volcanologist Roberge follows opening nods to volcanic Maori, Indonesian, Aztec, and Greek legends with brief continent-by-continent flybys of major erupters, from the humongous Yellowstone caldera in North America and the submerged Lō‘ihi Seamount, which will one day become the next Hawaiian island, to Antarctica’s Mount Erebus. She then looks further afield to Mars’ Olympus Mons and two other extraterrestrial volcanoes, digs into how magma chambers form deep underground, rolls out a tribute to renowned (though ill-fated) vulcanologists Maurice and Katia Krafft, and solidifies her survey by explaining how volcano scientists keep tabs on current and future eruptions with seismographs and satellites. Readers will come away from her terse but informative commentary, translated from French, with a wider knowledge of the shapes volcanoes can take and the types of material they eject; the screen print–style illustrations evoke a complementary, and proper, sense of scale and power along with offering schematic cutaway views of inner structures as well as low-angle portraits of solid, strong-looking, diversely hued deities, dancers, and warriors.

An unusually broad, if sketchy, overview of the subject.