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The Year Without Summer
- 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
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Publisher's Summary
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.
In the US, the extraordinary weather produced food shortages, religious revivals, and extensive migration from New England to the Midwest. In Europe, the cold and wet summer led to famine, food riots, the transformation of stable communities into wandering beggars, and one of the worst typhus epidemics in history. 1816 was the year Frankenstein was written. It was also the year Turner painted his fiery sunsets. All of these things are linked to global climate change - something we are quite aware of now, but that was utterly mysterious to people in the 19th century, who concocted all sorts of reasons for such an ungenial season.
Making use of a wealth of source material and employing a compelling narrative approach featuring peasants and royalty, politicians, writers, and scientists, The Year Without Summer by William K. Klingaman and Nicholas P. Klingaman examines not only the climate change engendered by the volcano, but also its effects on politics, the economy, the arts, and social structures.
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What listeners say about The Year Without Summer
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Ellen NB
- 02-24-20
Good audiobook to fall asleep to
I was expecting a gripping story of the biggest volcanic eruption in recorded history, a sympathetic focus on Indonesians and colonizers and Tambora's impact on them, and accounts of the Year Without a Summer and its impact around the world.
While this book does touch on these, and it does discuss some migrations triggered by crop failures, the reader drowns in facts, figures, and exhaustive and repetitive accounts of unseasonal weather week by week, sometimes day by day, including local temperatures, precipitation, flood levels, how many days it rained, how many days it snowed, etc, etc. Other chapters embark on long recitals of crop failures, right down to individual regions' and towns' losses of oats, wheat, corn, potatoes. As harvests fail, recitals change to local bread prices and food riots. The audiobook format and sonorous narration don't do the book any favors, but these repetitive passages tend to obscure any sense of an overarching narrative or point.
The book does enliven its meteorological survey with biographical accounts of key historical figures and a few colorful characters connected with the stormy weather of 1816: Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Napoleon (why?), Robert Peel, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and ambassasor John Quincy Adams in London.
That's the book's strength: it is an exhaustive compendium of firsthand accounts and data for the Year of No Summer in England and New England. It's just the most boring account of an volcanic eruption I've ever encountered.
The book's biggest weakness, as it inadvertently admits in the final chapter's whirlwind summary of Tambora's impact on India, China, and a few other areas outside Europe, is that non-English sources were "inaccessible" [to the authors].
I feel like a book published in 2019 on Tambora should be global in scope, not limit its focus almost exclusively to Britain, northwestern Europe, and the eastern seaboard of the US.
Happily, there IS a book that explores the drama of the Tambora eruption and its impacts all over the worls. Namely, Gillan D'arcy Wood's 2014 book on Tambora. The problem with that book is that it enthusiastically pounces on various world trends impossible fallout from the timbre eruption where it's difficult to prove cause and effect. In other words, that book is more speculative and interpretive, whereas this one focuses on collecting data and primary sources.
5 people found this helpful
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- Christi
- 12-29-20
I wouldn't recommend
The information on the subject matter contained in this book could have been done in a documentary. The author went off on many tangents and failed to tie them to the topic at hand.
1 person found this helpful
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- Faycal Ikhouane
- 11-24-22
Intersting story
In April 1815 mount Tambora in Indoneasia erupted (intensity 7 in a scale of 8). The book relates the events that were a consequence of the eruption, in particular the intense cold that many parts of the globe experienced. The summer of 1816 was more like a cold winter which led to the loss of harvests and famine. The book describes with great details what happened in the US, in some details the effects of the eruption in Europe, and gives a brief overview of what happened in Asia because of a lack of data.
The authors follows also the relationship between some known authors and the year without summer, in particular Mary Shelly and her novel Frenkenstein.
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- Lisa Brennan
- 10-26-20
Narration too poor
The subject matter is interesting, but very heavy. It The narrator is completely monotone and makes listening to the book so depressing I had to stop.
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- Dominic
- 08-20-20
Very informative as presented
A very comprehensive presentation of life at the time as they all were experiencing a very unusual time with the effects from a volcanic eruption in the South Pacific
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- Daniela
- 12-21-22
fantastic
Reading this book, makes me think that, in all things, history is repeating itself. Whatever the narrative, that is being spun, this book feels like our future on so many levels. Highly recommend
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Overall
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The Darkest Year focuses on Americans’ state of mind not only through what they said, but in the day-to-day details of their behavior. William K. Klingaman blends these psychological effects with the changes the war wrought in American society and culture, including shifts in family roles, race relations, economic pursuits, popular entertainment, education, and the arts.
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Unflinching recount of the US home front.
- By Marc R Luce on 08-22-21
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A Crack in the Edge of the World
- America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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San Francisco Earthquake that leveled a city symbolic of America's relentless western expansion. Simon Winchester has also fashioned an enthralling and informative informative look at the tumultuous subterranean world that produces earthquakes, the planet's most sudden and destructive force. In the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, San Francisco and a string of towns to its north-northwest and the south-southeast were overcome by an enormous shaking that was compounded by the violent shocks of an earthquake, registering 8.25 on the Richter scale.
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This Book Delivers
- By Drayton on 10-31-05
By: Simon Winchester
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When Life Nearly Died
- The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time
- By: Michael J. Benton
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Today it is common knowledge that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteorite impact 65 million years ago that killed half of all species then living. It is far less widely understood that a much greater catastrophe took place at the end of the Permian period 251 million years ago: at least 90 percent of life on earth was destroyed. When Life Nearly Died documents not only what happened during this gigantic mass extinction, but also the recent renewal of the idea of catastrophism.
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Obscurity to Enlightenment - A Mystery Revealed
- By Dipam on 03-18-21
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The Cactus Air Force
- Air War Over Guadalcanal
- By: Eric Hammel, Thomas McKelvey Cleaver
- Narrated by: Adam Henderson
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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For 40 years from 1961, the late Eric Hammel interviewed more than 150 American participants in the air campaign at Guadalcanal, none of whom are still alive. These interviews are the most comprehensive first-person accounts of the battle assembled by any historian. More importantly, they involved the junior officers and enlisted men whose stories and memories were not part of the official history, thus providing a unique insight. Using diary entries, interviews and first-hand accounts, this vivid narrative brings to life the struggle in the air over the island of Guadalcanal.
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Excellent Book!
- By Eric Peterson on 09-16-22
By: Eric Hammel, and others
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Disaster!
- A History of Earthquakes, Floods, Plagues, and Other Catastrophes
- By: John Withington
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 17 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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A comprehensive catalog of the most devastating and deadly events-natural or man-made-in human history. If you follow the news it can seem like injury, sickness, and death are now constant, inescapable occurrences that threaten us every second of every day. But such catastrophic events - as terrible and frightening as they are - have been happening for as long as mankind has walked the Earth.... and even before. From ancient volcanoes and floods to epidemics of cholera and smallpox to Hitler's mass killings in the 20th century, humanity's continued existence has always seemed perilous.
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Fantastic account of disasters!
- By Gardenstate Reader on 12-30-19
By: John Withington
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Forgotten Peoples of the Ancient World
- By: Philip Matyszak
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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This thorough guide explores those civilizations that have faded from the pages of our textbooks but played a significant role in the development of modern society. Forgotten Peoples of the Ancient World covers the Hyksos to the Hephthalites and everyone in between, providing a unique overview of humanity's history from approximately 3000 BCE-550 CE. Each entry exposes a diverse culture, highlighting their important contributions.
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Gripping and seamless
- By Mike Heim on 05-13-21
By: Philip Matyszak
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Island on Fire
- The Extraordinary Story of a Forgotten Volcano That Changed the World
- By: Alexandra Witze, Jeff Kanipe
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Laki is Iceland's largest volcano - and its most fearsome. Its eruption in 1783 is one of history's great untold natural disasters. Spewing out sun-blocking ash and then a poisonous fog for eight long months, the effects of the eruption lingered across the world for years. It caused the deaths of people as far away as the Nile and created catastrophic conditions throughout Europe.
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Interesting and Pertinent Topic!
- By Catherine Puma on 01-23-22
By: Alexandra Witze, and others
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The Little Ice Age
- How Climate Made History 1300-1850
- By: Brian Fagan
- Narrated by: Michael Langan
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The Little Ice Age tells the story of the turbulent, unpredictable, and often very cold years of modern European history, how climate altered historical events, and what they mean in the context of today’s global warming.
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Good but…
- By lucastoli on 07-14-22
By: Brian Fagan
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The Rape of the Mind
- The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing
- By: Dr. Joost A.M. Meerloo
- Narrated by: Chris Matthews
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Since 1933, when a completely drugged and trial-conditioned human wreck confessed to having started the Reichstag fire in Berlin, Dr. Joost A. M. Meerloo has studied the methods by which systematic mental pressure brings people to abject submission, and by which totalitarians imprint their subjective "truth" onto their victims' minds. And in The Rape of the Mind, he goes far beyond the direct military implications of mental torture to describing how our own culture unobtrusively shows symptoms of pressurizing people's minds.
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not a fan of the narrator
- By Timothy Mack on 07-24-22
Related to this topic
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Tambora
- The Eruption That Changed the World
- By: Gillen D'Arcy Wood
- Narrated by: Tom Pile
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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An unexpected pleasure
- By Anonymous User on 09-04-16
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Island on Fire
- The Extraordinary Story of a Forgotten Volcano That Changed the World
- By: Alexandra Witze, Jeff Kanipe
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Laki is Iceland's largest volcano - and its most fearsome. Its eruption in 1783 is one of history's great untold natural disasters. Spewing out sun-blocking ash and then a poisonous fog for eight long months, the effects of the eruption lingered across the world for years. It caused the deaths of people as far away as the Nile and created catastrophic conditions throughout Europe.
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Interesting and Pertinent Topic!
- By Catherine Puma on 01-23-22
By: Alexandra Witze, and others