Island on Fire: The extraordinary story of Laki, the volcano that turned eighteenth-century Europe dark

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With vivid prose, Tom Zoellner captures the horrors of the brutal sugar plantations of Jamaica as well as that brief but transcendent moment when a group of enslaved people sought, against tremendous odds, to transform the island into a space of liberation. Island on Fire offers a haunting parable of how history is made and remade up to the present day. ” —Karl Jacoby, author of Shadows at Dawn You can satisfy your curiosity at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laki -- which is what I would recommend for most readers. The authors struggled to make this a good popular science book, but (mostly) failed. The book reminded me of old whoozit's maxim: What was good was not original, and what was original, not good. Harsh, but not far off the mark. The only downside I found (which may have been due to it being an audiobook) is that it felt like it jumped around in time towards the start. At some points I had to rewind a bit to confirm where we were in the timeline. This may have been less noticeable if reading a printed copy. In the new rom-com Fire Island, written by comedian Joel Kim Booster and now streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu, the eponymous island is shown in all its summer glory. Located just a train (and ferry) ride away from New York City, this barrier island off the Long Island coast has been an iconic destination for the queer community since the early 20th Century.

It ends by returning to Heimaey where the book originally started and how the parish priest - who spoke the famous 'fire sermon' that supposedly stopped the lava flow not far from the church where he was preaching - was still being recognized and revered.Island on Fire is a gripping account of the five weeks when Jamaica burned in a rebellion led by enslaved preacher Samuel Sharpe. Tom Zoellner recounts these dramatic events with great energy and detail, crucially setting Sharpe’s story—which until now has not been well known away from the island—in the wider context of the struggle for abolition on both sides of the Atlantic. ” —Carrie Gibson, author of Empire’s Crossroads

Using the meticulous records of one Jón Steingrímsson, Witze and Kanipe reconstruct the terrifying days following the eruption of Laki. However, Island on Fire is more than the simple retelling of what happened to Iceland in 1783. It is a treatise on volcanology, from plate tectonics and magma build-up to detailed explanations on the scale and after-effects of eruptions from Mount Vesuvius (the one that buried Pompeii) and Krakatau (the Indonesian volcano whose eruption and final collapse could be heard as far as Singapore) to Mount Pelée (the Caribbean monster who erupted with devastating force in 1902) and Mount St. Helens. Even better, Witze and Kanipe bring the study of ice cores, atmospheric conditions, magma formation, lava flows, and killer gases emitted by underwater volcanoes to a level that laypeople can easily comprehend. As Advent and Christmas is a time for remembering the hope that such an arrival occasioned, it also lends itself to reflecting on others who have continued to spread that hope of liberation through the way they have lived their lives collectively with others. Zoellner describes the story of Samuel Sharpe becoming recognized as one of Jamaica’s seven national heroes: Jane Rosen takes death, a seemingly dark theme, and skillfully turns it into a heartfelt and delightful reading experience. I struggled through about 3/4 of the book and enjoyed about 1/3 of that. I was looking forward to learning about Laki, a famous volcano among geologists, but didn't, really. But it was an excellent sleep aid! Oh, well. 2.6 stars. From a New York Times bestselling author, a gripping account of the slave rebellion that led to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire.

If you're already a volcano afficionada/o, you may already know most of what's here. And while Witze and Kanipe do a reasonable job of dramatizing their story, they don't yet have the narrative touch of some of our top popular nonfiction authors, like Erik Larson and Mary Karr. The book straddles a line between "of interest to Iceland/volcano geeks" and "trying to be of interest to everyone."

Jill Lepore in New York Burning notes that: “Thirty-five percent of all slave rebellions in the British Caribbean took place at Christmastime.”While reading Jane Austen one summer on Fire Island, Kim Booster "couldn’t help", he wrote in a recent essay for Penguin, but "map" the experiences of her characters "navigating the limiting social conventions of her time" onto "the similarly tortured social conventions of gay male spaces". In this vein, the film joins a long tradition of artworks about the simultaneously loose and restrictive mores of Fire Island, a world associated with both sexual freedoms and social hierarchies. Edmund White, who wrote about a fictionalised version of Fire Island in his 1973 debut novel Forgetting Elena, notes in his memoir City Boy how the rituals of gay social life there "rhymed in my imagination with the rituals of medieval Japan or Versailles". On the night of December 27, 1831, a watchman standing on top of the courthouse in the Jamaican city of Montego Bay spotted a fire on a hillside south of town. Then another fire appeared close by. Then another. Zoellner quotes Verene Shepherd describing the unnamed woman rumoured to have started the first plantation fire in the 1831 Christmas Uprising: I grew up in Jamaica during the 70s and half of the eighties, and due to the colonialism hangover that was/is neocolonialism, my knowledge of Jamaican history is paltry at best, bookended by Columbus and the Arawaks (Taino more accurately) and the National Heroes and Independence. This book chronicles a labour strike orchestrated by Samuel Sharpe, one of the seven Heroes, in December of 1831, that led to a fiery uprising amongst enslaved people which precipitated the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1834. The author provides a detailed analysis of Jamaica's early history within the Empire and the political and economic forces that made slavery the scaffolding which held up the wealth of England and her monarchy. (Looking at you Lilibet ;)) I bought this book after my trip to Iceland in June 2014. Iceland is a fascinating country and so was the book.