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Krakatoa
- The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
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Publisher's summary
The best-selling author of The Professor and the Madman and The Map That Changed the World examines the enduring and world-changing effects of the catastrophic eruption off the coast of Java of the earth's most dangerous volcano - Krakatoa.
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. The effects of the immense waves were felt as far away as France. Barometers in Bogotá and Washington, DC, went haywire. Bodies were washed up in Zanzibar. The sound of the island's destruction was heard in Australia and India and on islands thousands of miles away. Most significant of all - in view of today's new political climate - the eruption helped to trigger in Java a wave of murderous anti-Western militancy among fundamentalist Muslims: one of the first outbreaks of Islamic-inspired killings anywhere.
Simon Winchester's long experience in the world wandering as well as his knowledge of history and geology give us an entirely new perspective on this fascinating and iconic event as he brings it telling back to life.
Critic reviews
"Thrilling, comprehensive, literate, meticulously researched and scientifically accurate....It is one of the best books ever written about the history and significance of a natural disaster." (The New York Times Book Review)
"If you're looking for drama, you'll certainly find it here....Winchester manages a dry and ironic delivery, very much in keeping with his writing style. But the main point of interest when the dust has settled is the far-flung ramifications of this eruption upon world events. This is a winner." (AudioFile)
"All readers, science-prone or not, will be delighted by this experience-expanding book." (Booklist)
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Story
Originally published in 1985, Outposts is Simon Winchester's journey to find the vanishing empire, "on which the sun never sets". In the course of a three-year, 100,000 mile journey - from the chill of the Antarctic to the blue seas of the Caribbean, from the South of Spain and the tip of China to the utterly remote specks in the middle of gale-swept oceans - he discovered such romance and depravity, opulence and despair that he was inspired to write what may be the last contemporary account of the British empire.
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Nice Travelogue
- By J. S. Koehler on 01-28-06
By: Simon Winchester
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The Men Who United the States
- America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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How did America become “one nation, indivisible”? What unified a growing number of disparate states into the modern country we recognize today? To answer these questions, Winchester follows in the footsteps of America’s most essential explorers, thinkers, and innovators. Introducing the fascinating people who played a pivotal role in creating today’s United States, he ponders whether the historic work of uniting the States has succeeded, and to what degree.
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Sarcastic
- By Cynthia Hartman on 06-16-16
By: Simon Winchester
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The End of the River
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 1 hr and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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When it comes to climate-change-inspired threats, it is rising sea levels we hear most about. But if the oceans are, as Herman Melville put it, “the tide-beating heart of the Earth”, rivers are its circulatory system. In the United States, there is no river more storied, symbolic, and vital than the Mississippi, and none, to use Mark Twain’s word, more lawless. The struggle to control it has been going on nearly as long as there has been human civilization on its banks, and the attendant drama and dangers have been memorialized by many writers.
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Stunning Informative and Scarry as Hell
- By Dorn Cranert on 05-06-22
By: Simon Winchester
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The Meaning of Everything
- The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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From the best-selling author of The Professor and the Madman, The Map That Changed the World, and Krakatoa comes a truly wonderful celebration of the English language and of its unrivaled treasure house, the Oxford English Dictionary.
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A New Appreciation
- By Donald on 11-01-04
By: Simon Winchester
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Atlantic
- Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Atlantic is a biography of a tremendous space that has been central to the ambitions of explorers, scientists, and warriors, and continues profoundly to affect our character, attitudes, and dreams. Spanning the ocean's story, from its geological origins to the age of exploration, from World War II battles to today's struggles with pollution and overfishing, Winchester's narrative is epic, intimate, and awe inspiring.
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Starts Better Than it Finishes
- By Ray on 12-18-10
By: Simon Winchester
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Knowing What We Know
- The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes—this is Simon Winchester’s brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information without wisdom?
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Colorful anecdotes but tiring after a while.
- By reader on 05-03-23
By: Simon Winchester
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Land
- How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Land - whether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture, suburb or city - is central to our existence. It quite literally underlies and underpins everything. Employing the keen intellect, insatiable curiosity, and narrative verve that are the foundations of his previous bestselling works, Simon Winchester examines what we human beings are doing - and have done - with the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of our planet.
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Audiobook Version is the Best!
- By semarla on 01-31-21
By: Simon Winchester
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The Perfectionists
- How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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The New York Times best-selling author traces the development of technology from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age to explore the single component crucial to advancement - precision - in a superb history that is both an homage and a warning for our future.
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Somewhat less than perfect
- By enya keshet on 06-19-18
By: Simon Winchester
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The Year Without Summer
- 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History
- By: William K. Klingaman, Nicholas P. Klingaman
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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1816 was a remarkable year - mostly for the fact that there was no summer. As a result of a volcanic eruption at Mount Tambora in Indonesia, weather patterns were disrupted worldwide for months, allowing for excessive rain, frost, and snowfall through much of the Northeastern US and Europe in the summer of 1816.
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Good audiobook to fall asleep to
- By Ellen NB on 02-24-20
By: William K. Klingaman, and others
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The Fracture Zone
- A Return to the Balkans
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning journalist and author Simon Winchester takes readers on a personal tour of the Balkans. Combining history and interviews with the people who live there, Winchester offers a fascinating glimpse into the complex issues at work in this chaotic region. Unrest in the Balkans has gone on for centuries. A seasoned reporter, Winchester visited the region twenty years ago. When Kosovo reached crisis level in 1997, Winchester thought a return visit to the beleaguered area would help to make sense out of the awful violence.
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Loved this-Great combo:Story and History Explained
- By Jeremy on 07-10-14
By: Simon Winchester
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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
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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.
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Interesting and fun
- By Lin Waters on 12-11-21
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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
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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.
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A very special book
- By Scott Fitzsimmons on 02-02-19
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The Day the World Ended
- The Mount Pelee Disaster: May 7, 1902
- By: Gordon Thomas, Max Morgan-Witts
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In late April 1902, Mount Pelee, a volcano on the Caribbean island Martinique, began to wake up. It emitted clouds of ash and smoke for two weeks until violently erupting on May 8. Over 30,000 residents of St. Pierre were killed; they burned to death under rivers of hot lava and suffocated under pounds of hot ash. Only three people managed to survive: a prisoner trapped in a dungeon-like jail cell, a man on the outskirts of town, and a young girl found floating unconscious in a boat days later.
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Thrilling Account of a Sadly Preventable Disaster
- By Admiralu on 10-17-20
By: Gordon Thomas, and others
What listeners say about Krakatoa
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Matthew
- 10-01-16
On the Fence on This One!
This is the second book I’ve listened to by Simon Winchester, which I was prompted to do by his title The Professor and the Madman. This book seemed to be the most interesting of all his other titles beyond that book, but as good as that book was this book simply does not measure up on any level. This book left me feeling flat and unsated. While I did finish the book in a reasonably swift manner I was doing so more in hopes that it would suddenly, and without warning, grab me and pull me in. It never did.
Krakatoa is overly detailed and it has far too much ancillary filler history about the colonial ambitions of the Europeans, about the location, and the goings on of the people in Batavia; so on and so forth. It reads more like a history text book then what a book like this, by this caliber of writer, should read like. It simply does not focus enough on the event itself in my view. A small glimmer of hope is that Winchester managed to weave enough interesting scientific information into the entire telling that I did learn something and I found those parts particularly good and of value.
Winchester is a very good narrator, but narration alone cannot invest someone in a book. I have mixed emotions about this book because I judge my books based on how much I learn, how many bookmarks I place for later reference, how I feel about listening to the book again, and if the writer can stick to the facts without bias or embellishment. I definitely learned new things from this book, but I placed only two book marks, I’m not sure about listening again, and I'm not sure how biased some of the story is? So, I sit on the fence wondering what I should do because as I write this I honestly cannot say 'get the book', or, 'avoid the book'. I wish Audible allowed updates to reviews so I could give it another go and if I find I am wrong update this! I regret being of no help in your decision!
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4 people found this helpful
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- Kate
- 03-24-04
Brilliant
Leaves no stone unturned as to the reasons and effects of this famous eruption. Winchester's research and understanding of the ramifications are breathtaking.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Mike MacSkivvy
- 02-01-17
great history book
As always, Simon is able to pull so much worldly knowledge into one subject. Absolutely brilliant. he hasn't disappointed me yet. So far my favorite book of his is Atlantic.
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- J. Houlding
- 11-07-04
Fantastic!!!
This is a fantastic book! I have read and enjoyed several of Winchester's books and find them all fascinating and well written. He weaves geology and history together in unanticipated ways. Since reading the Map That Changed the World, I have a new found respect/interest in the effects that geology shapes culture, and this book brings this notion to a new level, providing insights that are fundamental to my understaning of both the physical evolution of the planet and human history. I highly recommend this book if you are interested in either understanding how culture/society are shaped and changed and the emergence of the concept of a global village or in the history of our understanding of the earths geology. Also I highly recommend the Map That Changed the Wold as well as (not by Winchester) A History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. These three books together will gave me a profound respect/understanding of the link between earth history and human history.
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- Jonathan Donner
- 11-24-21
Best writing I've ever encountered!
Narrator and author of this masterpiece composed layers of research and brilliant descriptions. Simon winchester is a true artist and I'll be searching for more titles from him now. This book looks at Krakatoa as a geological event and as catalyst for many other types of scientific and social improvement.
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- W. Rodger Gantt
- 08-06-06
The Caprice of Nature
The eruption of Krakatoa near Java and Sumatra in 1883 was the first major, natural disaster to occur in the early years of electric telegraphy and its undersea cables. By then all major cities and many smaller ones were connected by telegraph. News events could be sent around the world in an hour or two. The concept of the “global village” began in 1883 as the world quickly learned that all humankind survives at the caprice of Nature.
Simon Winchester’s book, “Krakatoa”, describes colonial history, early telegraphy and workings of geology leading up to the eruption. He then vividly depicts the series of warning eruptions over several months and finally the humongous explosions creating tsunamis killing over 36,000 people. The author describes the aftermath, including worldwide, barometric waves and colorful sunsets. Finally, there’s the robust return of life to initially sterile Anak Krakatoa (Child of Krakatoa).
The author’s descriptions of the Dutch colonization of Indonesia, the role of gutta-percha in underwater cables, Alfred Wegener, plate tectonics and subduction, just to name a few, give the story greater depth. However, these may be tangential wanderings for some listeners. The author is his own reader. His conversational style and dry wit may not be sufficiently dynamic for some. One should listen to the audio sample and read some other reviews before buying the book.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Andy
- 05-02-04
more than the story of a volcano eruption
This book was terrific. It tells a rich story about Krakatoa and the Dutch ruled Indonesian territory that Krakatoa was situated in. The author weaves history and geology with exquisite language (....the mortally expensive event) and a narration in a very listenable English accent. The thorough research done by the author is reflected in his description of many sources of information that were sought out to tell the entire story.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Nicolas
- 01-07-05
Cumbersome
While many of the stories that the author shared were interesting, this could have been slimmed down considerably. He goes into incredibly long-winded accounts of uninteresting stories several times. It would have been much better to establish some main characters and follow them thoughgout the timeline rather than bouncing around with many small almost irritating accounts.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-25-09
Kratatoa - West of Java
In typical Winchester style, this book covers the topic with throrough details, including the history of the Dutch colony, the geology, the history of theory of plate tectonics, the event itself and it's ramifications.
It probably helps to be a bit of a geology buff due to the details and some of the terminology, but even without any geologic knowledge, this book is certain to make fascinating reading.
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- ShadowMahn
- 10-05-16
Better the 2d time around!
I first listened to this book on CD's, while on an elliptical trainer. It was slow going! I enjoy audible and came across this book again. It is a much better experience this 2d time. One suggestion, look up Krakatoa on google earth for reference points. It will aid your understanding of the story and plot locations.
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