Ashes were already falling, not as yet very thickly. I looked round: a dense black cloud was coming up behind us, spreading over the earth like a flood. That's Pliny the Younger, writing to Tacitus about the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE, one of many volcanic eruptions that have become part of the story of human history. We have always, it seems, been simultaneously fascinated and terrified by volcanoes, and this book brings together an unforgettable selection of firsthand accounts from around the world and through the centuries. In these pages, anonymous seventeenth-century...
Ashes were already falling, not as yet very thickly. I looked round: a dense black cloud was coming up behind us, spreading over the earth like a f...
