The Year Without a Summer

The History and Legacy of the 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora

By: Charles River Editors

Narrated by: Mark Norman

Length: 1 hr and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

In many ways history is the story of human beings trying to control their destinies by overcoming the effects of their physical surroundings. As too many have learned, the best they could often do was cope with nature, and the various natural disasters produced around the globe. Consider, for example, the year 1816, known as the "Year Without a Summer", which found the working poor in both Europe and America facing starvation caused by factors that few, if any, of them understood. They only knew that the time for planting, the longed for and planned for last days of winter, never came. Farmers who had been growing the same crops for decades began to be curious when, in April of that year, the snow still fell. By the first of May, they were outright concerned. In the weeks that followed, each faced a critical decision: go forward and plant as usual, trusting that the sun would again warm the earth, or continue to wait. In the end, their decisions made little difference, except perhaps that those who waited could survive a little longer by eating the seeds they had been saving. For in 1816, the seeds planted in the ground to sprout and grow usually did neither, because temperatures were never warm enough to nurture their progress. Instead, most lay dormant, while those hardier varieties did finally push their ways to the earth’s surface, only to have the life frozen out of them by cold winds unabated by the sun’s warmth.

As the prolonged crisis went on, people around the planet tried to come to grips with what was happening. Preachers spoke of God’s judgment, while farmers stood and prayed for relief, but neither group knew the truth: the cause of their misfortune lay not at their own doorsteps but thousands of miles away on an island they had never heard of. In this case, their destiny had been decided on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia, thanks to a big volcano known as Mount Tambora. In one of the strongest volcanic explosions in recorded history, Mount Tambora in April 1815 and sent enough ash and dust into the air to block out some of the sun’s warmth around the globe for nearly the next two years.

In the aftermath of the April 1815 explosion, the summer of 1816 witnessed crops freeze in the fields and be buried under snow. Indian corn, a hardy staple of the early American diet, barely produced, and hay and wheat failed to grow. Traditional summer vegetables, such as cucumbers and tomatoes, failed to grow at all, leaving people severely deficient in the vitamins they produced. Animals and humans alike would go hungry, as there was less food for each. Ultimately, those who survived would tell stories of the desperate time, and speak with wonder about the fact that they had survived at all to tell their tales.

©2016 Charles River Editors (P)2016 Charles River Editors

A Year Without a Summer

An excellent summary of a little- remembered event that traumatized the entire world in 1815. A more polished reader would have made listening more enjoyable.

Narration Needs Editing

I was shocked by hearing the narrator cough, clear his throat and repeat himself incessantly. All of that should have been edited out. The story itself is well written, and the experience accounts are fascinating.

Not just unabridged but unedited as well

I had high hopes for this, I really did. I guess I was expecting more information on the eruption itself but this book deals mostly with the impact on crops around the world. Fair enough, the eruption happened in 1815 and there wasn't exactly a lot of information gathering facilities in place then.
The reason I zinged this with 2 stars for performance was that this audio is the raw unedited. You hear him say a line and then realize he had the inflection off so he rereads the same line a time OR two more. Now I record my own radio ads so I know full well that you mess up on occasion BUT we go back an edit out my errors. This sucker has all the errors left in.

Somebody didn't do their job on this one. I've bought several audio books from Charles River Editors and have been pretty pleased so far.

Is this a joke???

The honest truth is this book is a decent rendition of the eruption of mount Tambora. The performance is absolutely atrocious. If I want to listen to somebody clear their throat in the middle of our conversation, I will go and talk with one of my coworkers. The editor of this book should be working at McDonald’s by the end of the week.
I understand that when you are reading a book, there are times that you have to start stop it and restart a sentence because you miss pronounce the word or something along those lines. How this actually made it into the book is dumbfounding. Numerous times the reader would stop then restart the same sentence. At first I thought it was something skipping like an old record record. Then I realized that whoever produced this book simply did not edit it before they sent it out for production.

Unbearable

What disappointed you about The Year Without a Summer?

An otherwise good book was butchered by an unedited and awful narration.

What was most disappointing about Charles River Editors’s story?

The narrator.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Mark Norman?

Literally anyone else.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Disappointed.

short and sloppy

the audio editing was highly flawed. the reader would read the same sentence multiple times if he made a mistake, but the audio editor never cut these out. the writing was not insightful, just containing an endless series of quotations without reference to modern scientific research. to add insult to injury the audio includes an aural reading of the bibliography, just to pass out the time.