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Jim
Jun 03, 2012 rated it really liked it
Shelves: history
Parts of this book had the potential to be boring, particularly some of geological data, but the material is presented in such an engaging manner as to hold the reader's interest throughout. Hell, I even found the acknowledgements interesting! All you will ever need to know about the eruption of Krakatoa contained in one easy volume! ...more
Ken
Nov 24, 2010 rated it liked it
Shelves: natural-history
Simon Winchester is truly a first-rate writer with a distinctive style. He comes across as kind of a Victorian professor, a tone which is perfect for some of his other works such as “The Professor and the Madman” and his history of the Oxford English Dictionary. However, I don’t think his style works for the subject matter at hand here. I doubt there is another recent work of natural history which contains more instances of the words “splendid” and “delightful.” Winchester never met a tangent th ...more
Tracyene
Apr 04, 2008 rated it it was amazing
Madeleine
Jun 23, 2008 marked it as tbr-longlist
Kiri
Aug 21, 2008 rated it really liked it  ·  review of another edition
Phoebe
Dec 27, 2008 rated it liked it
Shelves: indonesia
Gaijinmama
Jul 07, 2010 marked it as to-read
Jayme Pendergraft
Oct 16, 2012 marked it as to-read
Shelves: library
Cheryl Scaccio
Apr 07, 2013 rated it really liked it
Oblomov
Aug 10, 2013 rated it liked it
Janet Whalen
Oct 29, 2013 marked it as to-read
Jonathan
Mar 16, 2014 marked it as to-read
Erica
Jul 09, 2015 marked it as to-read
Dana Arbelaez
Nov 10, 2016 marked it as to-read
Sk888888
Oct 17, 2017 rated it really liked it  ·  review of another edition
m00ngrrrl
Aug 26, 2017 marked it as to-read
Kara
Sep 26, 2017 marked it as to-read
Mansir
Jan 25, 2018 marked it as to-read  ·  review of another edition
Brian
Dec 08, 2018 marked it as to-read
Shelves: history, own, 00own
Christi
Mar 20, 2019 marked it as to-read
Brenda
Jan 23, 2022 marked it as to-read
Lorri
Feb 21, 2022 marked it as to-read
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