VOLCANOES AND EARTHQUAKES. THE EARTH IN MOTION

A portrait gallery of erupting clouds and huge showers of magma distinguish this imported overview, originally published in Dutch.

The photos—several punched up with sprays or flecks of red added by the artist—are eye-catching…but not appealing enough to compensate for the jumble of confusing, contradictory, or incorrect claims that accompany them. Some of the bobbles may just be translation errors, such as referring to a graphic image as a “photo” on one page and elsewhere dubbing ice columns in an Icelandic lava tunnel “the façade of a fairytale.” But the assertion that the “hotspot” under the Canary Islands is not on a fault line, coming as it does shortly after the author indicates in both text and diagrams that faults are where volcanoes form, will leave readers confused. They’ll also be perplexed by the statement that flamingos eat out of Tanzania’s Lake Natron, even though it’s described as being too hot and salty for any life to survive, and by a startling line about “some species [of animals] that seek out the toxins of volcanic activity,” which van Gageldonk fails to unpack. There’s an overall lack of balance, too, as the topic doesn’t switch to earthquakes until the last five spreads, which include one that is just a section title and another actually devoted to tsunamis.

A damp squib with too many fault lines.