The end of the world? Not if, but when., 09 May 2008
This book is very nice: well written and concise - ideal for the beginner who wants a broad coverage of a fascinating topic. This is certainly one of the better 'short introductions' on the market.

The introductory chapter serves as a good overview for the rest of the book, while the proceeding chapters about global warming and the possibility of an ice age are both good. The text is fact-heavy but still flows nicely, telling a clear story. While the authors own views are certainly evident, he also mentions the ideas of other scientists (some contraversial and some downright mad).

The book goes on to discuss the threat and possible consequences of geological events such as super-volcanic eruptions, mega-tsunami's and city-destroying earthquakes. He not only considers the Earth sceince behind these phenomena, but the economic impact is also covered, albeit superficially. I found the chapter about the 'Threat from Space' particularly interesting (and disturbing).

I give the book 4 stars and not 5 because, i my opinion, it lacked scientific depth. I believe, even in a book so small and introductory, that the author could have given a little more explanation of the science. Perhpas he neglected to do this in the fear of scaring off potential readers who don't want too much of an intellectual challenge, or perhaps he was concerned with making the book too long for the format of the series (though he does repeat himself several times, so cutting down the words would not have been too difficult). A bit more technical science would have been welcome.

Overall, a very nice read with a pessimistic (but probably realistic) outlook.

Concise, hard-hitting and compelling - a brilliant introduction, 03 Apr 2008
The Very Short Introduction series by Oxford University Press has a good reputation for presenting challenging subjects in an easily accessible manner. "Global Catastrophes" by Bill McGuire is one of its very best examples. Originally published in 2002 as "A Guide to the End of the World", it has since been updated to include events as recent as 2005, with a new preface as well as a fully revised text and bibliography.

The book deals exclusively with environmental phenomena rather than man-made, technological disasters. In each chapter McGuire explores the evidence for - as well as the likely effects of - different catastrophes that could, in the near future, put an end to human civilisation, namely global warming, a new ice age, supervolanoes and other tectonic hazards, and lastly asteroidal impact. His mastery of the material is clear, and at every stage he is careful to back up his arguments with facts and figures drawn from scientific studies and computer models. At the same time his style is conversational and makes on the whole for easy reading, although occasionally the analogies he chooses tend to confuse rather than illuminate.

The opening chapter on global warming is the book's tour de force - as well as probably the most relevant for the reader today - providing a succinct summary of the main issues and sources of contention. McGuire pulls no punches, making it clear just how unprecedented is the effect that human industrial activity is having on the global climate, and how our planet is hotter now than it has been for 90% of its history. For any sceptics of climate change, or of its future implications for our civilisation, this will be a potent wake-up call. In complete contrast, the next chapter explores the counter-intuitive (yet nevertheless scientifically plausible) theory that rising global temperatures could in fact trigger a rapid freeze and a return to Ice Age conditions. But regardless of whether we are set for global warming or global cooling, McGuire demonstrates why this is an especially bad period in geological time for us to be experimenting with our atmosphere and climate.

The third chapter - on supervolcanoes and other tectonic events - is similarly well-argued, as one might expect from a Professor of Vulcanology at University College London. One disappointment, however, is the short treatment afforded to the topic of flood basalt eruptions, in particular the Deccan Trap event, which is now thought to have been a contributing factor in the decline and extinction of the dinosaurs. A significant amount of research is now being conducted into these events, which could have been explored further. Finally, McGuire's discussion of potential extinction-level asteroidal impact is both balanced and considered, stressing the catastrophic effect this would have while also underlining the unlikelihood of such an event occurring in the near future.

The book includes 20 images and diagrams, serving to illustrate and reinforce McGuire's points, as well as 2 appendices, summarising the relative frequency of the various threats and plotting the most significant on a geological timescale. The bibliography is thorough, divided according to the relevant chapters, and runs to no less than 65 titles, making this book an excellent platform for exploring the subject further.

All in all, "Global Catastrophes: A Very Short Introduction" is an excellent overview of what is a difficult, unsettling and sometimes contentious subject, and a book that I can highly recommend.

Don't Have Nightmares..., 04 Jul 2006
I've always been a bit of a fan of these Very Short Introductions - as someone who likes to be a know-it-all but has an increasingly short attention span they're perfect. Well this is one of the best I've read - highly informative, readable, packed with facts. A different version of the end of the world is contemplated on almost every page - and by placing the human race in its true timescale, as a negligible speck on the history of the planet, this is guaranteed to make you feel very small indeed. McGuire makes it clear that with most of the catastrophes he discusses, from the obvious global warming to the alarming super-volcanoes, it's a question of when, not if. And he dispenses with the hubristic notion that there's much we can do about it except prepare for the aftermath.

Frankly, makes me want to become an astronaut.

The end of the world? Not if, but when., 09 May 2008
This book is very nice: well written and concise - ideal for the beginner who wants a broad coverage of a fascinating topic. This is certainly one of the better 'short introductions' on the market.

The introductory chapter serves as a good overview for the rest of the book, while the proceeding chapters about global warming and the possibility of an ice age are both good. The text is fact-heavy but still flows nicely, telling a clear story. While the authors own views are certainly evident, he also mentions the ideas of other scientists (some contraversial and some downright mad).

The book goes on to discuss the threat and possible consequences of geological events such as super-volcanic eruptions, mega-tsunami's and city-destroying earthquakes. He not only considers the Earth sceince behind these phenomena, but the economic impact is also covered, albeit superficially. I found the chapter about the 'Threat from Space' particularly interesting (and disturbing).

I give the book 4 stars and not 5 because, i my opinion, it lacked scientific depth. I believe, even in a book so small and introductory, that the author could have given a little more explanation of the science. Perhpas he neglected to do this in the fear of scaring off potential readers who don't want too much of an intellectual challenge, or perhaps he was concerned with making the book too long for the format of the series (though he does repeat himself several times, so cutting down the words would not have been too difficult). A bit more technical science would have been welcome.

Overall, a very nice read with a pessimistic (but probably realistic) outlook.

Concise, hard-hitting and compelling - a brilliant introduction, 03 Apr 2008
The Very Short Introduction series by Oxford University Press has a good reputation for presenting challenging subjects in an easily accessible manner. "Global Catastrophes" by Bill McGuire is one of its very best examples. Originally published in 2002 as "A Guide to the End of the World", it has since been updated to include events as recent as 2005, with a new preface as well as a fully revised text and bibliography.

The book deals exclusively with environmental phenomena rather than man-made, technological disasters. In each chapter McGuire explores the evidence for - as well as the likely effects of - different catastrophes that could, in the near future, put an end to human civilisation, namely global warming, a new ice age, supervolanoes and other tectonic hazards, and lastly asteroidal impact. His mastery of the material is clear, and at every stage he is careful to back up his arguments with facts and figures drawn from scientific studies and computer models. At the same time his style is conversational and makes on the whole for easy reading, although occasionally the analogies he chooses tend to confuse rather than illuminate.

The opening chapter on global warming is the book's tour de force - as well as probably the most relevant for the reader today - providing a succinct summary of the main issues and sources of contention. McGuire pulls no punches, making it clear just how unprecedented is the effect that human industrial activity is having on the global climate, and how our planet is hotter now than it has been for 90% of its history. For any sceptics of climate change, or of its future implications for our civilisation, this will be a potent wake-up call. In complete contrast, the next chapter explores the counter-intuitive (yet nevertheless scientifically plausible) theory that rising global temperatures could in fact trigger a rapid freeze and a return to Ice Age conditions. But regardless of whether we are set for global warming or global cooling, McGuire demonstrates why this is an especially bad period in geological time for us to be experimenting with our atmosphere and climate.

The third chapter - on supervolcanoes and other tectonic events - is similarly well-argued, as one might expect from a Professor of Vulcanology at University College London. One disappointment, however, is the short treatment afforded to the topic of flood basalt eruptions, in particular the Deccan Trap event, which is now thought to have been a contributing factor in the decline and extinction of the dinosaurs. A significant amount of research is now being conducted into these events, which could have been explored further. Finally, McGuire's discussion of potential extinction-level asteroidal impact is both balanced and considered, stressing the catastrophic effect this would have while also underlining the unlikelihood of such an event occurring in the near future.

The book includes 20 images and diagrams, serving to illustrate and reinforce McGuire's points, as well as 2 appendices, summarising the relative frequency of the various threats and plotting the most significant on a geological timescale. The bibliography is thorough, divided according to the relevant chapters, and runs to no less than 65 titles, making this book an excellent platform for exploring the subject further.

All in all, "Global Catastrophes: A Very Short Introduction" is an excellent overview of what is a difficult, unsettling and sometimes contentious subject, and a book that I can highly recommend.

Don't Have Nightmares..., 04 Jul 2006
I've always been a bit of a fan of these Very Short Introductions - as someone who likes to be a know-it-all but has an increasingly short attention span they're perfect. Well this is one of the best I've read - highly informative, readable, packed with facts. A different version of the end of the world is contemplated on almost every page - and by placing the human race in its true timescale, as a negligible speck on the history of the planet, this is guaranteed to make you feel very small indeed. McGuire makes it clear that with most of the catastrophes he discusses, from the obvious global warming to the alarming super-volcanoes, it's a question of when, not if. And he dispenses with the hubristic notion that there's much we can do about it except prepare for the aftermath.

Frankly, makes me want to become an astronaut.

One long chilling revelation, 21 Jun 2007
I would regard this book as a must read for understanding the world we were born into. As an Englishman I also find it leaves a chilling problem; what effect can this rampant exploitation have taken upon the English nation? Where does responsibility lie, especially as he shows the continuity with today's world economy? Ruthlessly meticulous, Davis has destroyed my previously held opinion that the British Empire 'did some good and did some bad' in one brutal reading.

El Nino book, 18 Feb 2005
I thought it was a fantastic work. It is great to see somebody attacking colonialism, for oppressing, people rather, than the usual ignoring of colonial crimes. It gives many details, from Brazil, too China, and states directly teh full horror of what it must have been like to be in the famines, and how terrible and awful they were. Prooving how democracy is right in many ways, I think. It talks of many countries.

History to make you think., 04 Sep 2001
This is first-rate history. Meticulously researched and documented, with numerous illustrations and case studies, and wide-ranging citation sacross the relevant literature, LATE VICTORIAN HOLOCAUSTS shows conclusively that the wealth of the "First World" is almost exclusively based on lopsided trading and imperialist conditions in the late 19th century, coupled with the devastating effects of El Ninyo famines - and at the same time points up the utter myth of "free trade" put about by the liberal establishment (why, for instance, do all the commodities from tropical countries drop in price in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, while all those goods from temperate climates rise?)

Only 4-stars, though, because the criticism of the previous reviewer has some weight. The historical implications of the El Ninyo episodes could also have been considered with relation to the 1879 War of the Pacific between Chile and Peru/Bolivia, in which the war was triggered by the imposition of a port tax in the north by Bolivia on Chile following the economic slowdown of the early 1870s and the effect of the El ninyo on Peru (floods) and Bolivia (drought). Also, Davis could have expanded the thread of his argument with comparisons with French colonialism in Africa in the 1910s/1920s, when exactly the same movements of cash crops led to famine and desperate hunger (as in India/China in Davis' book).

Still, Davis' book is important, timely and excellent. If you want to understand why "economic migrants" have every right to come to the rich countries of the world, read this book.

A relentlessly one-dimensional polemic, 14 Aug 2001
I've read and enjoyed Mike Davis' work before, but with this I'd lost sympathy way before the end. This is not to deny his main thesis, which is hardly new or even particularly controversial - that what we currently refer to as third world countries were systematically under-developed at the expense of their colonial masters. This after all is still happening, and is what the whole globalisation controversy is about. Davis concentrates on the the massive famines at the end of the nineteenth century in India China and Brazil, and argues that they were a result of El Nino conditions. Well, actually he doesn't, because he goes to great lengths, in good Marxist tradition, to set up a definition of a famine as a political event - ie they're always someone's fault. So in the case of India the late nineteenth century famines were the fault of the British administration. Well certainly the attitude of the British, of complacency mixed with racism and backed by a laissez-faire ideology which believed it best not to interfere in these situations - a complex of attitudes seen fifty years earlier in the Irish famine - exarcebated the situation. But the same catastrophe, with comparable death tolls, hit China as well. Ah well, the Opium wars, you know.....China had already been affected by the deadly virus of Western capitalism, so even if China wasn't a colony, it was still all down to the British. And Brazil? More catastrophe, more megadeaths. No problem - Brazil was already part of the London-based capitalist system. Enough said.

So as we turn to the 20th century we should see these trends continue? Well, bit of a problem there actually: the two greatest 20th century famines were unconnected to El Nino, and were in Russia/Ukraine in the thirties, and China during the Great Leap Forward at the start of the sixties. Davis mentions the latter: "the scale of this holocaust is stupefying, and for many sympathisers with the Chinese revolution, inexplicable". He doesn't declare himself to be such a sympathiser - it would have been more honest for him to do so - but quite clearly he is. He sneers at Jasper Becker's "Hungry Ghosts" on this episode as a "Robert Conquest-like expose". Ah yes, Robert Conquest - isn't he the guy who insisted that the actual victims of Stalinist excesses, in the famines and the gulags, was much higher than previously thought? And is it not now generally accepted that he was, um, right? So the nineteenth century famines were the result of the inexorable logic of imperialism, while the thirties famine in Russia goes unmentioned and the famine in Maoist China is perhaps down to Mao's personal inflexibility. The problem, declares Davis, was the lack of socialist democracy. Good old socialist democracy, eh.....as practiced where, exactly?

OK, it's his book, he can write a polemic if he wants, but as a reader I can then decide if I think that someone is so ideologically driven as to be an unreliable guide. I have no problem with criticism of British or any other Western imperialism, but the sheer relentless one-sidedness of it for me in the end proved counter-productive.

Excellent and ground breaking work, 04 Feb 2001
This new work by Mike Davis is an exemplary piece of scholarship and one that forces the reader to consider the world around them afresh. After his earlier ground breaking 'City of Quartz', where Davis challenged how we collectively view urban areas he has equally audaciously attempted to track the dividing point between the first and the third worlds. Few but the persistent readers of the Journal Capital, Nature, Socialism could have predicted that Davis would write such a book. His revisitation of urban themes in 'Ecology of Fear' did not signal this sudden change.

Quite simply Davis explains the divergence of the first and third world's as stemming from the Political Ecology of a series of 'El Nino' events at the end of the nineteenth century. A catastrophic collision of severe droughts with the aggressive imperialism of the Western powers, led to famine of the peoples of the South. Millions of lives were lost as the Western powers took the opportunity to tighten or extend their grip over the resources of countries such as India and China. Davis demonstrates how the previous pre-imperial arrangements warded off the worst of famine, the very arrangements that the new global market had undermined. Time and again, revolts of peasant peoples against the imperial tyranny were broken by the combined might of superior military technology and hunger. Davis does not just recount the statistics, these accounts are of a passion and moral force rarely found in academic writing. Instead of the faceless millions so typical of planetary histories Davis provides a feel for the millions of individual tragedies represent by such calamities.

Shifting from environmental history, to agricultural history and back again Davis is never dull, navigating complex terrain with aplomb. The height of his erudition is the account of the development of the science of El Nino events. Deftly he moves through the complex physics, the shifting paradigms and scientific projects that have formed the account of weather systems that are in use today. Only after this tour de force does he return to the topics in hand to illustrate how it was not the lack of rain but a militarised enforcement of the free market that divided humanity so starkly.

Davis is not only writing a compelling history, it is hard not to see an analogy behind such an example. The conjoining of rampant market forces with severe climate events robbed millions of their lives and their descendants of the chance of a better life. Davis is not issuing guarantees such events could not be repeated. This is a passionate, urgent book that hums with verve and indignation. It is what scholarly books should be informed, educated but profoundly accessible. Do not wait for the paperback.

The end of the world? Not if, but when., 09 May 2008
This book is very nice: well written and concise - ideal for the beginner who wants a broad coverage of a fascinating topic. This is certainly one of the better 'short introductions' on the market.

The introductory chapter serves as a good overview for the rest of the book, while the proceeding chapters about global warming and the possibility of an ice age are both good. The text is fact-heavy but still flows nicely, telling a clear story. While the authors own views are certainly evident, he also mentions the ideas of other scientists (some contraversial and some downright mad).

The book goes on to discuss the threat and possible consequences of geological events such as super-volcanic eruptions, mega-tsunami's and city-destroying earthquakes. He not only considers the Earth sceince behind these phenomena, but the economic impact is also covered, albeit superficially. I found the chapter about the 'Threat from Space' particularly interesting (and disturbing).

I give the book 4 stars and not 5 because, i my opinion, it lacked scientific depth. I believe, even in a book so small and introductory, that the author could have given a little more explanation of the science. Perhpas he neglected to do this in the fear of scaring off potential readers who don't want too much of an intellectual challenge, or perhaps he was concerned with making the book too long for the format of the series (though he does repeat himself several times, so cutting down the words would not have been too difficult). A bit more technical science would have been welcome.

Overall, a very nice read with a pessimistic (but probably realistic) outlook.

Concise, hard-hitting and compelling - a brilliant introduction, 03 Apr 2008
The Very Short Introduction series by Oxford University Press has a good reputation for presenting challenging subjects in an easily accessible manner. "Global Catastrophes" by Bill McGuire is one of its very best examples. Originally published in 2002 as "A Guide to the End of the World", it has since been updated to include events as recent as 2005, with a new preface as well as a fully revised text and bibliography.

The book deals exclusively with environmental phenomena rather than man-made, technological disasters. In each chapter McGuire explores the evidence for - as well as the likely effects of - different catastrophes that could, in the near future, put an end to human civilisation, namely global warming, a new ice age, supervolanoes and other tectonic hazards, and lastly asteroidal impact. His mastery of the material is clear, and at every stage he is careful to back up his arguments with facts and figures drawn from scientific studies and computer models. At the same time his style is conversational and makes on the whole for easy reading, although occasionally the analogies he chooses tend to confuse rather than illuminate.

The opening chapter on global warming is the book's tour de force - as well as probably the most relevant for the reader today - providing a succinct summary of the main issues and sources of contention. McGuire pulls no punches, making it clear just how unprecedented is the effect that human industrial activity is having on the global climate, and how our planet is hotter now than it has been for 90% of its history. For any sceptics of climate change, or of its future implications for our civilisation, this will be a potent wake-up call. In complete contrast, the next chapter explores the counter-intuitive (yet nevertheless scientifically plausible) theory that rising global temperatures could in fact trigger a rapid freeze and a return to Ice Age conditions. But regardless of whether we are set for global warming or global cooling, McGuire demonstrates why this is an especially bad period in geological time for us to be experimenting with our atmosphere and climate.

The third chapter - on supervolcanoes and other tectonic events - is similarly well-argued, as one might expect from a Professor of Vulcanology at University College London. One disappointment, however, is the short treatment afforded to the topic of flood basalt eruptions, in particular the Deccan Trap event, which is now thought to have been a contributing factor in the decline and extinction of the dinosaurs. A significant amount of research is now being conducted into these events, which could have been explored further. Finally, McGuire's discussion of potential extinction-level asteroidal impact is both balanced and considered, stressing the catastrophic effect this would have while also underlining the unlikelihood of such an event occurring in the near future.

The book includes 20 images and diagrams, serving to illustrate and reinforce McGuire's points, as well as 2 appendices, summarising the relative frequency of the various threats and plotting the most significant on a geological timescale. The bibliography is thorough, divided according to the relevant chapters, and runs to no less than 65 titles, making this book an excellent platform for exploring the subject further.

All in all, "Global Catastrophes: A Very Short Introduction" is an excellent overview of what is a difficult, unsettling and sometimes contentious subject, and a book that I can highly recommend.

Don't Have Nightmares..., 04 Jul 2006
I've always been a bit of a fan of these Very Short Introductions - as someone who likes to be a know-it-all but has an increasingly short attention span they're perfect. Well this is one of the best I've read - highly informative, readable, packed with facts. A different version of the end of the world is contemplated on almost every page - and by placing the human race in its true timescale, as a negligible speck on the history of the planet, this is guaranteed to make you feel very small indeed. McGuire makes it clear that with most of the catastrophes he discusses, from the obvious global warming to the alarming super-volcanoes, it's a question of when, not if. And he dispenses with the hubristic notion that there's much we can do about it except prepare for the aftermath.

Frankly, makes me want to become an astronaut.

One long chilling revelation, 21 Jun 2007
I would regard this book as a must read for understanding the world we were born into. As an Englishman I also find it leaves a chilling problem; what effect can this rampant exploitation have taken upon the English nation? Where does responsibility lie, especially as he shows the continuity with today's world economy? Ruthlessly meticulous, Davis has destroyed my previously held opinion that the British Empire 'did some good and did some bad' in one brutal reading.

El Nino book, 18 Feb 2005
I thought it was a fantastic work. It is great to see somebody attacking colonialism, for oppressing, people rather, than the usual ignoring of colonial crimes. It gives many details, from Brazil, too China, and states directly teh full horror of what it must have been like to be in the famines, and how terrible and awful they were. Prooving how democracy is right in many ways, I think. It talks of many countries.

History to make you think., 04 Sep 2001
This is first-rate history. Meticulously researched and documented, with numerous illustrations and case studies, and wide-ranging citation sacross the relevant literature, LATE VICTORIAN HOLOCAUSTS shows conclusively that the wealth of the "First World" is almost exclusively based on lopsided trading and imperialist conditions in the late 19th century, coupled with the devastating effects of El Ninyo famines - and at the same time points up the utter myth of "free trade" put about by the liberal establishment (why, for instance, do all the commodities from tropical countries drop in price in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, while all those goods from temperate climates rise?)

Only 4-stars, though, because the criticism of the previous reviewer has some weight. The historical implications of the El Ninyo episodes could also have been considered with relation to the 1879 War of the Pacific between Chile and Peru/Bolivia, in which the war was triggered by the imposition of a port tax in the north by Bolivia on Chile following the economic slowdown of the early 1870s and the effect of the El ninyo on Peru (floods) and Bolivia (drought). Also, Davis could have expanded the thread of his argument with comparisons with French colonialism in Africa in the 1910s/1920s, when exactly the same movements of cash crops led to famine and desperate hunger (as in India/China in Davis' book).

Still, Davis' book is important, timely and excellent. If you want to understand why "economic migrants" have every right to come to the rich countries of the world, read this book.

A relentlessly one-dimensional polemic, 14 Aug 2001
I've read and enjoyed Mike Davis' work before, but with this I'd lost sympathy way before the end. This is not to deny his main thesis, which is hardly new or even particularly controversial - that what we currently refer to as third world countries were systematically under-developed at the expense of their colonial masters. This after all is still happening, and is what the whole globalisation controversy is about. Davis concentrates on the the massive famines at the end of the nineteenth century in India China and Brazil, and argues that they were a result of El Nino conditions. Well, actually he doesn't, because he goes to great lengths, in good Marxist tradition, to set up a definition of a famine as a political event - ie they're always someone's fault. So in the case of India the late nineteenth century famines were the fault of the British administration. Well certainly the attitude of the British, of complacency mixed with racism and backed by a laissez-faire ideology which believed it best not to interfere in these situations - a complex of attitudes seen fifty years earlier in the Irish famine - exarcebated the situation. But the same catastrophe, with comparable death tolls, hit China as well. Ah well, the Opium wars, you know.....China had already been affected by the deadly virus of Western capitalism, so even if China wasn't a colony, it was still all down to the British. And Brazil? More catastrophe, more megadeaths. No problem - Brazil was already part of the London-based capitalist system. Enough said.

So as we turn to the 20th century we should see these trends continue? Well, bit of a problem there actually: the two greatest 20th century famines were unconnected to El Nino, and were in Russia/Ukraine in the thirties, and China during the Great Leap Forward at the start of the sixties. Davis mentions the latter: "the scale of this holocaust is stupefying, and for many sympathisers with the Chinese revolution, inexplicable". He doesn't declare himself to be such a sympathiser - it would have been more honest for him to do so - but quite clearly he is. He sneers at Jasper Becker's "Hungry Ghosts" on this episode as a "Robert Conquest-like expose". Ah yes, Robert Conquest - isn't he the guy who insisted that the actual victims of Stalinist excesses, in the famines and the gulags, was much higher than previously thought? And is it not now generally accepted that he was, um, right? So the nineteenth century famines were the result of the inexorable logic of imperialism, while the thirties famine in Russia goes unmentioned and the famine in Maoist China is perhaps down to Mao's personal inflexibility. The problem, declares Davis, was the lack of socialist democracy. Good old socialist democracy, eh.....as practiced where, exactly?

OK, it's his book, he can write a polemic if he wants, but as a reader I can then decide if I think that someone is so ideologically driven as to be an unreliable guide. I have no problem with criticism of British or any other Western imperialism, but the sheer relentless one-sidedness of it for me in the end proved counter-productive.

Excellent and ground breaking work, 04 Feb 2001
This new work by Mike Davis is an exemplary piece of scholarship and one that forces the reader to consider the world around them afresh. After his earlier ground breaking 'City of Quartz', where Davis challenged how we collectively view urban areas he has equally audaciously attempted to track the dividing point between the first and the third worlds. Few but the persistent readers of the Journal Capital, Nature, Socialism could have predicted that Davis would write such a book. His revisitation of urban themes in 'Ecology of Fear' did not signal this sudden change.

Quite simply Davis explains the divergence of the first and third world's as stemming from the Political Ecology of a series of 'El Nino' events at the end of the nineteenth century. A catastrophic collision of severe droughts with the aggressive imperialism of the Western powers, led to famine of the peoples of the South. Millions of lives were lost as the Western powers took the opportunity to tighten or extend their grip over the resources of countries such as India and China. Davis demonstrates how the previous pre-imperial arrangements warded off the worst of famine, the very arrangements that the new global market had undermined. Time and again, revolts of peasant peoples against the imperial tyranny were broken by the combined might of superior military technology and hunger. Davis does not just recount the statistics, these accounts are of a passion and moral force rarely found in academic writing. Instead of the faceless millions so typical of planetary histories Davis provides a feel for the millions of individual tragedies represent by such calamities.

Shifting from environmental history, to agricultural history and back again Davis is never dull, navigating complex terrain with aplomb. The height of his erudition is the account of the development of the science of El Nino events. Deftly he moves through the complex physics, the shifting paradigms and scientific projects that have formed the account of weather systems that are in use today. Only after this tour de force does he return to the topics in hand to illustrate how it was not the lack of rain but a militarised enforcement of the free market that divided humanity so starkly.

Davis is not only writing a compelling history, it is hard not to see an analogy behind such an example. The conjoining of rampant market forces with severe climate events robbed millions of their lives and their descendants of the chance of a better life. Davis is not issuing guarantees such events could not be repeated. This is a passionate, urgent book that hums with verve and indignation. It is what scholarly books should be informed, educated but profoundly accessible. Do not wait for the paperback.

Alien Volcanoes: don't forget the artist!, 12 Jun 2008
I was surprised (and disappointed) that the author is given only as 'RMC Lopes'. The authors are clearly identified on the cover as 'Rosaly M.C.Lopes and Michael W. Carroll'. Michael not only co-wrote the text, but as a prominent space artist he provided numerous excellent paintings of scenes it is not yet possible to photograph. These are therefore essential to this book, and also make it not only better to look at but enhance the understanding of the reader. This is an excellent treatise on the thermally active planets and satellites of our Solar System covering volcanoes (extinct and active), vents, geysers and cryovulcanism, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.
David A. Hardy, FBIS, FIAAA (co-author/illustrator of THE FIRES WITHIN, FUTURES: 50 YEARS IN SPACE, etc.)

The end of the world? Not if, but when., 09 May 2008
This book is very nice: well written and concise - ideal for the beginner who wants a broad coverage of a fascinating topic. This is certainly one of the better 'short introductions' on the market.

The introductory chapter serves as a good overview for the rest of the book, while the proceeding chapters about global warming and the possibility of an ice age are both good. The text is fact-heavy but still flows nicely, telling a clear story. While the authors own views are certainly evident, he also mentions the ideas of other scientists (some contraversial and some downright mad).

The book goes on to discuss the threat and possible consequences of geological events such as super-volcanic eruptions, mega-tsunami's and city-destroying earthquakes. He not only considers the Earth sceince behind these phenomena, but the economic impact is also covered, albeit superficially. I found the chapter about the 'Threat from Space' particularly interesting (and disturbing).

I give the book 4 stars and not 5 because, i my opinion, it lacked scientific depth. I believe, even in a book so small and introductory, that the author could have given a little more explanation of the science. Perhpas he neglected to do this in the fear of scaring off potential readers who don't want too much of an intellectual challenge, or perhaps he was concerned with making the book too long for the format of the series (though he does repeat himself several times, so cutting down the words would not have been too difficult). A bit more technical science would have been welcome.

Overall, a very nice read with a pessimistic (but probably realistic) outlook.

Concise, hard-hitting and compelling - a brilliant introduction, 03 Apr 2008
The Very Short Introduction series by Oxford University Press has a good reputation for presenting challenging subjects in an easily accessible manner. "Global Catastrophes" by Bill McGuire is one of its very best examples. Originally published in 2002 as "A Guide to the End of the World", it has since been updated to include events as recent as 2005, with a new preface as well as a fully revised text and bibliography.

The book deals exclusively with environmental phenomena rather than man-made, technological disasters. In each chapter McGuire explores the evidence for - as well as the likely effects of - different catastrophes that could, in the near future, put an end to human civilisation, namely global warming, a new ice age, supervolanoes and other tectonic hazards, and lastly asteroidal impact. His mastery of the material is clear, and at every stage he is careful to back up his arguments with facts and figures drawn from scientific studies and computer models. At the same time his style is conversational and makes on the whole for easy reading, although occasionally the analogies he chooses tend to confuse rather than illuminate.

The opening chapter on global warming is the book's tour de force - as well as probably the most relevant for the reader today - providing a succinct summary of the main issues and sources of contention. McGuire pulls no punches, making it clear just how unprecedented is the effect that human industrial activity is having on the global climate, and how our planet is hotter now than it has been for 90% of its history. For any sceptics of climate change, or of its future implications for our civilisation, this will be a potent wake-up call. In complete contrast, the next chapter explores the counter-intuitive (yet nevertheless scientifically plausible) theory that rising global temperatures could in fact trigger a rapid freeze and a return to Ice Age conditions. But regardless of whether we are set for global warming or global cooling, McGuire demonstrates why this is an especially bad period in geological time for us to be experimenting with our atmosphere and climate.

The third chapter - on supervolcanoes and other tectonic events - is similarly well-argued, as one might expect from a Professor of Vulcanology at University College London. One disappointment, however, is the short treatment afforded to the topic of flood basalt eruptions, in particular the Deccan Trap event, which is now thought to have been a contributing factor in the decline and extinction of the dinosaurs. A significant amount of research is now being conducted into these events, which could have been explored further. Finally, McGuire's discussion of potential extinction-level asteroidal impact is both balanced and considered, stressing the catastrophic effect this would have while also underlining the unlikelihood of such an event occurring in the near future.

The book includes 20 images and diagrams, serving to illustrate and reinforce McGuire's points, as well as 2 appendices, summarising the relative frequency of the various threats and plotting the most significant on a geological timescale. The bibliography is thorough, divided according to the relevant chapters, and runs to no less than 65 titles, making this book an excellent platform for exploring the subject further.

All in all, "Global Catastrophes: A Very Short Introduction" is an excellent overview of what is a difficult, unsettling and sometimes contentious subject, and a book that I can highly recommend.

Don't Have Nightmares..., 04 Jul 2006
I've always been a bit of a fan of these Very Short Introductions - as someone who likes to be a know-it-all but has an increasingly short attention span they're perfect. Well this is one of the best I've read - highly informative, readable, packed with facts. A different version of the end of the world is contemplated on almost every page - and by placing the human race in its true timescale, as a negligible speck on the history of the planet, this is guaranteed to make you feel very small indeed. McGuire makes it clear that with most of the catastrophes he discusses, from the obvious global warming to the alarming super-volcanoes, it's a question of when, not if. And he dispenses with the hubristic notion that there's much we can do about it except prepare for the aftermath.

Frankly, makes me want to become an astronaut.

One long chilling revelation, 21 Jun 2007
I would regard this book as a must read for understanding the world we were born into. As an Englishman I also find it leaves a chilling problem; what effect can this rampant exploitation have taken upon the English nation? Where does responsibility lie, especially as he shows the continuity with today's world economy? Ruthlessly meticulous, Davis has destroyed my previously held opinion that the British Empire 'did some good and did some bad' in one brutal reading.

El Nino book, 18 Feb 2005
I thought it was a fantastic work. It is great to see somebody attacking colonialism, for oppressing, people rather, than the usual ignoring of colonial crimes. It gives many details, from Brazil, too China, and states directly teh full horror of what it must have been like to be in the famines, and how terrible and awful they were. Prooving how democracy is right in many ways, I think. It talks of many countries.

History to make you think., 04 Sep 2001
This is first-rate history. Meticulously researched and documented, with numerous illustrations and case studies, and wide-ranging citation sacross the relevant literature, LATE VICTORIAN HOLOCAUSTS shows conclusively that the wealth of the "First World" is almost exclusively based on lopsided trading and imperialist conditions in the late 19th century, coupled with the devastating effects of El Ninyo famines - and at the same time points up the utter myth of "free trade" put about by the liberal establishment (why, for instance, do all the commodities from tropical countries drop in price in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, while all those goods from temperate climates rise?)

Only 4-stars, though, because the criticism of the previous reviewer has some weight. The historical implications of the El Ninyo episodes could also have been considered with relation to the 1879 War of the Pacific between Chile and Peru/Bolivia, in which the war was triggered by the imposition of a port tax in the north by Bolivia on Chile following the economic slowdown of the early 1870s and the effect of the El ninyo on Peru (floods) and Bolivia (drought). Also, Davis could have expanded the thread of his argument with comparisons with French colonialism in Africa in the 1910s/1920s, when exactly the same movements of cash crops led to famine and desperate hunger (as in India/China in Davis' book).

Still, Davis' book is important, timely and excellent. If you want to understand why "economic migrants" have every right to come to the rich countries of the world, read this book.

A relentlessly one-dimensional polemic, 14 Aug 2001
I've read and enjoyed Mike Davis' work before, but with this I'd lost sympathy way before the end. This is not to deny his main thesis, which is hardly new or even particularly controversial - that what we currently refer to as third world countries were systematically under-developed at the expense of their colonial masters. This after all is still happening, and is what the whole globalisation controversy is about. Davis concentrates on the the massive famines at the end of the nineteenth century in India China and Brazil, and argues that they were a result of El Nino conditions. Well, actually he doesn't, because he goes to great lengths, in good Marxist tradition, to set up a definition of a famine as a political event - ie they're always someone's fault. So in the case of India the late nineteenth century famines were the fault of the British administration. Well certainly the attitude of the British, of complacency mixed with racism and backed by a laissez-faire ideology which believed it best not to interfere in these situations - a complex of attitudes seen fifty years earlier in the Irish famine - exarcebated the situation. But the same catastrophe, with comparable death tolls, hit China as well. Ah well, the Opium wars, you know.....China had already been affected by the deadly virus of Western capitalism, so even if China wasn't a colony, it was still all down to the British. And Brazil? More catastrophe, more megadeaths. No problem - Brazil was already part of the London-based capitalist system. Enough said.

So as we turn to the 20th century we should see these trends continue? Well, bit of a problem there actually: the two greatest 20th century famines were unconnected to El Nino, and were in Russia/Ukraine in the thirties, and China during the Great Leap Forward at the start of the sixties. Davis mentions the latter: "the scale of this holocaust is stupefying, and for many sympathisers with the Chinese revolution, inexplicable". He doesn't declare himself to be such a sympathiser - it would have been more honest for him to do so - but quite clearly he is. He sneers at Jasper Becker's "Hungry Ghosts" on this episode as a "Robert Conquest-like expose". Ah yes, Robert Conquest - isn't he the guy who insisted that the actual victims of Stalinist excesses, in the famines and the gulags, was much higher than previously thought? And is it not now generally accepted that he was, um, right? So the nineteenth century famines were the result of the inexorable logic of imperialism, while the thirties famine in Russia goes unmentioned and the famine in Maoist China is perhaps down to Mao's personal inflexibility. The problem, declares Davis, was the lack of socialist democracy. Good old socialist democracy, eh.....as practiced where, exactly?

OK, it's his book, he can write a polemic if he wants, but as a reader I can then decide if I think that someone is so ideologically driven as to be an unreliable guide. I have no problem with criticism of British or any other Western imperialism, but the sheer relentless one-sidedness of it for me in the end proved counter-productive.

Excellent and ground breaking work, 04 Feb 2001
This new work by Mike Davis is an exemplary piece of scholarship and one that forces the reader to consider the world around them afresh. After his earlier ground breaking 'City of Quartz', where Davis challenged how we collectively view urban areas he has equally audaciously attempted to track the dividing point between the first and the third worlds. Few but the persistent readers of the Journal Capital, Nature, Socialism could have predicted that Davis would write such a book. His revisitation of urban themes in 'Ecology of Fear' did not signal this sudden change.

Quite simply Davis explains the divergence of the first and third world's as stemming from the Political Ecology of a series of 'El Nino' events at the end of the nineteenth century. A catastrophic collision of severe droughts with the aggressive imperialism of the Western powers, led to famine of the peoples of the South. Millions of lives were lost as the Western powers took the opportunity to tighten or extend their grip over the resources of countries such as India and China. Davis demonstrates how the previous pre-imperial arrangements warded off the worst of famine, the very arrangements that the new global market had undermined. Time and again, revolts of peasant peoples against the imperial tyranny were broken by the combined might of superior military technology and hunger. Davis does not just recount the statistics, these accounts are of a passion and moral force rarely found in academic writing. Instead of the faceless millions so typical of planetary histories Davis provides a feel for the millions of individual tragedies represent by such calamities.

Shifting from environmental history, to agricultural history and back again Davis is never dull, navigating complex terrain with aplomb. The height of his erudition is the account of the development of the science of El Nino events. Deftly he moves through the complex physics, the shifting paradigms and scientific projects that have formed the account of weather systems that are in use today. Only after this tour de force does he return to the topics in hand to illustrate how it was not the lack of rain but a militarised enforcement of the free market that divided humanity so starkly.

Davis is not only writing a compelling history, it is hard not to see an analogy behind such an example. The conjoining of rampant market forces with severe climate events robbed millions of their lives and their descendants of the chance of a better life. Davis is not issuing guarantees such events could not be repeated. This is a passionate, urgent book that hums with verve and indignation. It is what scholarly books should be informed, educated but profoundly accessible. Do not wait for the paperback.

Alien Volcanoes: don't forget the artist!, 12 Jun 2008
I was surprised (and disappointed) that the author is given only as 'RMC Lopes'. The authors are clearly identified on the cover as 'Rosaly M.C.Lopes and Michael W. Carroll'. Michael not only co-wrote the text, but as a prominent space artist he provided numerous excellent paintings of scenes it is not yet possible to photograph. These are therefore essential to this book, and also make it not only better to look at but enhance the understanding of the reader. This is an excellent treatise on the thermally active planets and satellites of our Solar System covering volcanoes (extinct and active), vents, geysers and cryovulcanism, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.
David A. Hardy, FBIS, FIAAA (co-author/illustrator of THE FIRES WITHIN, FUTURES: 50 YEARS IN SPACE, etc.)

I couldn't put it down!, 04 Sep 1999
I don't do much reading, but this book kept me captivated from the moment I picked it up. Books based on true stories can be dry and uninteresting; however, MacLean combines fact, speculation, and emotion in a way that keeps the reader clamoring for more. I was inspired to read "Young Men and Fire" after hearing Richard Shindell sing James Keelaghan's song, "Cold Missouri Waters" (based on MacLean's book) on the "Cry Cry Cry" CD. After reading this book, I feel compelled to visit the 13 crosses marking the tragic ending for those men on that Mann Gulch hillside.

A fantastic and inspiring story of modern heroism!, 18 Aug 1999
The most important aspect of Norman Maclean's work, "Young Men And Fire," has absolutely nothing to do with the Mann Gulch fire. At the core of this story is a perfect example of modern heroism, as well as an author's inspiring quest to not only lend these fine young men the credit they deserve, but in the process find himself.

A great cross-over between history and fiction, 12 Mar 1999
My husband read this book a few years ago when it was first plublished. At the time I wasn't much interested in what appeared to me to be a story about fighting a fire, probably filled with alot of facts I couldn't understand. It was not until I read an article about MacLean and how he did not publish (or complete for that matter)any of his works until he was in his 70's that I became curious about him. I first read "A River Runs Through It, then went down to our basement to dig out "Young Men and Fire"

Lately I have developed the greatest admiration for those writers who can bridge the gap between non-fiction and fiction. My favorite writer to do this was Mari Sandoz, but MacLean has done it also. This is not the same as historical fiction, which makes up a story based loosely on fact. This is a style the majority of which is based on known facts, but where we cannot possibly know the facts, such as a man's thoughts in the last moments before his death, the author uses, not imagination, but experience and research to fill in these gaps credibly.

While I was correct in my assumption that this book would have alot of information I didn't understand, it took nothing away from it for me. All I can say is, I wish MacLean had started his writing sooner, so that I would have had alot more of his work to read!

One of the best books that I have ever read! Honestly!, 25 Jan 1999
Yong Men and Fire is one of the best books that I have ever read. Norman Maclean brings to life the struggles that we endure during and after a tragety. The struggles of the dead, the survivors, the public and the ones closest to the tragety. And the ones that search for the real truth, atleast as close to it as we can get. A truely wonderful book that deserves to be read.

an excellent account of the mann gulch tragedy, 07 Dec 1998
maclean does any excellent job telling the horrid story of the smokejumpers in young men and fire. i do believe that it is more a tale of events than a story with plot. compared to his other book, a river runs through it, young men and fire does not compare to the story of fishing in montana. young men and fire is more an account than a story like maclean's previous novel. it's good, but can drag at points.

The end of the world? Not if, but when., 09 May 2008
This book is very nice: well written and concise - ideal for the beginner who wants a broad coverage of a fascinating topic. This is certainly one of the better 'short introductions' on the market.

The introductory chapter serves as a good overview for the rest of the book, while the proceeding chapters about global warming and the possibility of an ice age are both good. The text is fact-heavy but still flows nicely, telling a clear story. While the authors own views are certainly evident, he also mentions the ideas of other scientists (some contraversial and some downright mad).

The book goes on to discuss the threat and possible consequences of geological events such as super-volcanic eruptions, mega-tsunami's and city-destroying earthquakes. He not only considers the Earth sceince behind these phenomena, but the economic impact is also covered, albeit superficially. I found the chapter about the 'Threat from Space' particularly interesting (and disturbing).

I give the book 4 stars and not 5 because, i my opinion, it lacked scientific depth. I believe, even in a book so small and introductory, that the author could have given a little more explanation of the science. Perhpas he neglected to do this in the fear of scaring off potential readers who don't want too much of an intellectual challenge, or perhaps he was concerned with making the book too long for the format of the series (though he does repeat himself several times, so cutting down the words would not have been too difficult). A bit more technical science would have been welcome.

Overall, a very nice read with a pessimistic (but probably realistic) outlook.

Concise, hard-hitting and compelling - a brilliant introduction, 03 Apr 2008
The Very Short Introduction series by Oxford University Press has a good reputation for presenting challenging subjects in an easily accessible manner. "Global Catastrophes" by Bill McGuire is one of its very best examples. Originally published in 2002 as "A Guide to the End of the World", it has since been updated to include events as recent as 2005, with a new preface as well as a fully revised text and bibliography.

The book deals exclusively with environmental phenomena rather than man-made, technological disasters. In each chapter McGuire explores the evidence for - as well as the likely effects of - different catastrophes that could, in the near future, put an end to human civilisation, namely global warming, a new ice age, supervolanoes and other tectonic hazards, and lastly asteroidal impact. His mastery of the material is clear, and at every stage he is careful to back up his arguments with facts and figures drawn from scientific studies and computer models. At the same time his style is conversational and makes on the whole for easy reading, although occasionally the analogies he chooses tend to confuse rather than illuminate.

The opening chapter on global warming is the book's tour de force - as well as probably the most relevant for the reader today - providing a succinct summary of the main issues and sources of contention. McGuire pulls no punches, making it clear just how unprecedented is the effect that human industrial activity is having on the global climate, and how our planet is hotter now than it has been for 90% of its history. For any sceptics of climate change, or of its future implications for our civilisation, this will be a potent wake-up call. In complete contrast, the next chapter explores the counter-intuitive (yet nevertheless scientifically plausible) theory that rising global temperatures could in fact trigger a rapid freeze and a return to Ice Age conditions. But regardless of whether we are set for global warming or global cooling, McGuire demonstrates why this is an especially bad period in geological time for us to be experimenting with our atmosphere and climate.

The third chapter - on supervolcanoes and other tectonic events - is similarly well-argued, as one might expect from a Professor of Vulcanology at University College London. One disappointment, however, is the short treatment afforded to the topic of flood basalt eruptions, in particular the Deccan Trap event, which is now thought to have been a contributing factor in the decline and extinction of the dinosaurs. A significant amount of research is now being conducted into these events, which could have been explored further. Finally, McGuire's discussion of potential extinction-level asteroidal impact is both balanced and considered, stressing the catastrophic effect this would have while also underlining the unlikelihood of such an event occurring in the near future.

The book includes 20 images and diagrams, serving to illustrate and reinforce McGuire's points, as well as 2 appendices, summarising the relative frequency of the various threats and plotting the most significant on a geological timescale. The bibliography is thorough, divided according to the relevant chapters, and runs to no less than 65 titles, making this book an excellent platform for exploring the subject further.

All in all, "Global Catastrophes: A Very Short Introduction" is an excellent overview of what is a difficult, unsettling and sometimes contentious subject, and a book that I can highly recommend.

Don't Have Nightmares..., 04 Jul 2006
I've always been a bit of a fan of these Very Short Introductions - as someone who likes to be a know-it-all but has an increasingly short attention span they're perfect. Well this is one of the best I've read - highly informative, readable, packed with facts. A different version of the end of the world is contemplated on almost every page - and by placing the human race in its true timescale, as a negligible speck on the history of the planet, this is guaranteed to make you feel very small indeed. McGuire makes it clear that with most of the catastrophes he discusses, from the obvious global warming to the alarming super-volcanoes, it's a question of when, not if. And he dispenses with the hubristic notion that there's much we can do about it except prepare for the aftermath.

Frankly, makes me want to become an astronaut.

One long chilling revelation, 21 Jun 2007
I would regard this book as a must read for understanding the world we were born into. As an Englishman I also find it leaves a chilling problem; what effect can this rampant exploitation have taken upon the English nation? Where does responsibility lie, especially as he shows the continuity with today's world economy? Ruthlessly meticulous, Davis has destroyed my previously held opinion that the British Empire 'did some good and did some bad' in one brutal reading.

El Nino book, 18 Feb 2005
I thought it was a fantastic work. It is great to see somebody attacking colonialism, for oppressing, people rather, than the usual ignoring of colonial crimes. It gives many details, from Brazil, too China, and states directly teh full horror of what it must have been like to be in the famines, and how terrible and awful they were. Prooving how democracy is right in many ways, I think. It talks of many countries.

History to make you think., 04 Sep 2001
This is first-rate history. Meticulously researched and documented, with numerous illustrations and case studies, and wide-ranging citation sacross the relevant literature, LATE VICTORIAN HOLOCAUSTS shows conclusively that the wealth of the "First World" is almost exclusively based on lopsided trading and imperialist conditions in the late 19th century, coupled with the devastating effects of El Ninyo famines - and at the same time points up the utter myth of "free trade" put about by the liberal establishment (why, for instance, do all the commodities from tropical countries drop in price in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, while all those goods from temperate climates rise?)

Only 4-stars, though, because the criticism of the previous reviewer has some weight. The historical implications of the El Ninyo episodes could also have been considered with relation to the 1879 War of the Pacific between Chile and Peru/Bolivia, in which the war was triggered by the imposition of a port tax in the north by Bolivia on Chile following the economic slowdown of the early 1870s and the effect of the El ninyo on Peru (floods) and Bolivia (drought). Also, Davis could have expanded the thread of his argument with comparisons with French colonialism in Africa in the 1910s/1920s, when exactly the same movements of cash crops led to famine and desperate hunger (as in India/China in Davis' book).

Still, Davis' book is important, timely and excellent. If you want to understand why "economic migrants" have every right to come to the rich countries of the world, read this book.

A relentlessly one-dimensional polemic, 14 Aug 2001
I've read and enjoyed Mike Davis' work before, but with this I'd lost sympathy way before the end. This is not to deny his main thesis, which is hardly new or even particularly controversial - that what we currently refer to as third world countries were systematically under-developed at the expense of their colonial masters. This after all is still happening, and is what the whole globalisation controversy is about. Davis concentrates on the the massive famines at the end of the nineteenth century in India China and Brazil, and argues that they were a result of El Nino conditions. Well, actually he doesn't, because he goes to great lengths, in good Marxist tradition, to set up a definition of a famine as a political event - ie they're always someone's fault. So in the case of India the late nineteenth century famines were the fault of the British administration. Well certainly the attitude of the British, of complacency mixed with racism and backed by a laissez-faire ideology which believed it best not to interfere in these situations - a complex of attitudes seen fifty years earlier in the Irish famine - exarcebated the situation. But the same catastrophe, with comparable death tolls, hit China as well. Ah well, the Opium wars, you know.....China had already been affected by the deadly virus of Western capitalism, so even if China wasn't a colony, it was still all down to the British. And Brazil? More catastrophe, more megadeaths. No problem - Brazil was already part of the London-based capitalist system. Enough said.

So as we turn to the 20th century we should see these trends continue? Well, bit of a problem there actually: the two greatest 20th century famines were unconnected to El Nino, and were in Russia/Ukraine in the thirties, and China during the Great Leap Forward at the start of the sixties. Davis mentions the latter: "the scale of this holocaust is stupefying, and for many sympathisers with the Chinese revolution, inexplicable". He doesn't declare himself to be such a sympathiser - it would have been more honest for him to do so - but quite clearly he is. He sneers at Jasper Becker's "Hungry Ghosts" on this episode as a "Robert Conquest-like expose". Ah yes, Robert Conquest - isn't he the guy who insisted that the actual victims of Stalinist excesses, in the famines and the gulags, was much higher than previously thought? And is it not now generally accepted that he was, um, right? So the nineteenth century famines were the result of the inexorable logic of imperialism, while the thirties famine in Russia goes unmentioned and the famine in Maoist China is perhaps down to Mao's personal inflexibility. The problem, declares Davis, was the lack of socialist democracy. Good old socialist democracy, eh.....as practiced where, exactly?

OK, it's his book, he can write a polemic if he wants, but as a reader I can then decide if I think that someone is so ideologically driven as to be an unreliable guide. I have no problem with criticism of British or any other Western imperialism, but the sheer relentless one-sidedness of it for me in the end proved counter-productive.

Excellent and ground breaking work, 04 Feb 2001
This new work by Mike Davis is an exemplary piece of scholarship and one that forces the reader to consider the world around them afresh. After his earlier ground breaking 'City of Quartz', where Davis challenged how we collectively view urban areas he has equally audaciously attempted to track the dividing point between the first and the third worlds. Few but the persistent readers of the Journal Capital, Nature, Socialism could have predicted that Davis would write such a book. His revisitation of urban themes in 'Ecology of Fear' did not signal this sudden change.

Quite simply Davis explains the divergence of the first and third world's as stemming from the Political Ecology of a series of 'El Nino' events at the end of the nineteenth century. A catastrophic collision of severe droughts with the aggressive imperialism of the Western powers, led to famine of the peoples of the South. Millions of lives were lost as the Western powers took the opportunity to tighten or extend their grip over the resources of countries such as India and China. Davis demonstrates how the previous pre-imperial arrangements warded off the worst of famine, the very arrangements that the new global market had undermined. Time and again, revolts of peasant peoples against the imperial tyranny were broken by the combined might of superior military technology and hunger. Davis does not just recount the statistics, these accounts are of a passion and moral force rarely found in academic writing. Instead of the faceless millions so typical of planetary histories Davis provides a feel for the millions of individual tragedies represent by such calamities.

Shifting from environmental history, to agricultural history and back again Davis is never dull, navigating complex terrain with aplomb. The height of his erudition is the account of the development of the science of El Nino events. Deftly he moves through the complex physics, the shifting paradigms and scientific projects that have formed the account of weather systems that are in use today. Only after this tour de force does he return to the topics in hand to illustrate how it was not the lack of rain but a militarised enforcement of the free market that divided humanity so starkly.

Davis is not only writing a compelling history, it is hard not to see an analogy behind such an example. The conjoining of rampant market forces with severe climate events robbed millions of their lives and their descendants of the chance of a better life. Davis is not issuing guarantees such events could not be repeated. This is a passionate, urgent book that hums with verve and indignation. It is what scholarly books should be informed, educated but profoundly accessible. Do not wait for the paperback.

Alien Volcanoes: don't forget the artist!, 12 Jun 2008
I was surprised (and disappointed) that the author is given only as 'RMC Lopes'. The authors are clearly identified on the cover as 'Rosaly M.C.Lopes and Michael W. Carroll'. Michael not only co-wrote the text, but as a prominent space artist he provided numerous excellent paintings of scenes it is not yet possible to photograph. These are therefore essential to this book, and also make it not only better to look at but enhance the understanding of the reader. This is an excellent treatise on the thermally active planets and satellites of our Solar System covering volcanoes (extinct and active), vents, geysers and cryovulcanism, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.
David A. Hardy, FBIS, FIAAA (co-author/illustrator of THE FIRES WITHIN, FUTURES: 50 YEARS IN SPACE, etc.)

I couldn't put it down!, 04 Sep 1999
I don't do much reading, but this book kept me captivated from the moment I picked it up. Books based on true stories can be dry and uninteresting; however, MacLean combines fact, speculation, and emotion in a way that keeps the reader clamoring for more. I was inspired to read "Young Men and Fire" after hearing Richard Shindell sing James Keelaghan's song, "Cold Missouri Waters" (based on MacLean's book) on the "Cry Cry Cry" CD. After reading this book, I feel compelled to visit the 13 crosses marking the tragic ending for those men on that Mann Gulch hillside.

A fantastic and inspiring story of modern heroism!, 18 Aug 1999
The most important aspect of Norman Maclean's work, "Young Men And Fire," has absolutely nothing to do with the Mann Gulch fire. At the core of this story is a perfect example of modern heroism, as well as an author's inspiring quest to not only lend these fine young men the credit they deserve, but in the process find himself.

A great cross-over between history and fiction, 12 Mar 1999
My husband read this book a few years ago when it was first plublished. At the time I wasn't much interested in what appeared to me to be a story about fighting a fire, probably filled with alot of facts I couldn't understand. It was not until I read an article about MacLean and how he did not publish (or complete for that matter)any of his works until he was in his 70's that I became curious about him. I first read "A River Runs Through It, then went down to our basement to dig out "Young Men and Fire"

Lately I have developed the greatest admiration for those writers who can bridge the gap between non-fiction and fiction. My favorite writer to do this was Mari Sandoz, but MacLean has done it also. This is not the same as historical fiction, which makes up a story based loosely on fact. This is a style the majority of which is based on known facts, but where we cannot possibly know the facts, such as a man's thoughts in the last moments before his death, the author uses, not imagination, but experience and research to fill in these gaps credibly.

While I was correct in my assumption that this book would have alot of information I didn't understand, it took nothing away from it for me. All I can say is, I wish MacLean had started his writing sooner, so that I would have had alot more of his work to read!

One of the best books that I have ever read! Honestly!, 25 Jan 1999
Yong Men and Fire is one of the best books that I have ever read. Norman Maclean brings to life the struggles that we endure during and after a tragety. The struggles of the dead, the survivors, the public and the ones closest to the tragety. And the ones that search for the real truth, atleast as close to it as we can get. A truely wonderful book that deserves to be read.

an excellent account of the mann gulch tragedy, 07 Dec 1998
maclean does any excellent job telling the horrid story of the smokejumpers in young men and fire. i do believe that it is more a tale of events than a story with plot. compared to his other book, a river runs through it, young men and fire does not compare to the story of fishing in montana. young men and fire is more an account than a story like maclean's previous novel. it's good, but can drag at points.

The Return of Planet-X by Jaysen Q. Rand, 08 Apr 2008
This is really the best and most objective book written on the theme of Planet X that I have read. The author gives a very convincing and balanced analysis of the world wide clues both current and historical, which leads one to believe that Planet - X really is coming close and soon. Jaysen Q. Rand gives us a ratio of probabilities regarding the expected passage of Planet X. So that 20 per cent is worst case scenario,i.e. a close passing of the Brown Dwarf star Planet X and total devastation of Earth as we know it, 60 per cent chance of very great but survivable damage in that the passage is not so geographically near to Earth, but still cataclysmic for many of us. 20 per cent that the passage of Planet - X will be far enough distant to be easily survivable and to be seen as the passing of a comet. He gives very good survival guidelines and advice. I highly recommend this book to all who wish to be in the picture regarding Earth changes. Give yourselves a chance to prepare for the worst.....and at the same time hoping for the best.

The end of the world? Not if, but when., 09 May 2008
This book is very nice: well written and concise - ideal for the beginner who wants a broad coverage of a fascinating topic. This is certainly one of the better 'short introductions' on the market.

The introductory chapter serves as a good overview for the rest of the book, while the proceeding chapters about global warming and the possibility of an ice age are both good. The text is fact-heavy but still flows nicely, telling a clear story. While the authors own views are certainly evident, he also mentions the ideas of other scientists (some contraversial and some downright mad).

The book goes on to discuss the threat and possible consequences of geological events such as super-volcanic eruptions, mega-tsunami's and city-destroying earthquakes. He not only considers the Earth sceince behind these phenomena, but the economic impact is also covered, albeit superficially. I found the chapter about the 'Threat from Space' particularly interesting (and disturbing).

I give the book 4 stars and not 5 because, i my opinion, it lacked scientific depth. I believe, even in a book so small and introductory, that the author could have given a little more explanation of the science. Perhpas he neglected to do this in the fear of scaring off potential readers who don't want too much of an intellectual challenge, or perhaps he was concerned with making the book too long for the format of the series (though he does repeat himself several times, so cutting down the words would not have been too difficult). A bit more technical science would have been welcome.

Overall, a very nice read with a pessimistic (but probably realistic) outlook.

Concise, hard-hitting and compelling - a brilliant introduction, 03 Apr 2008
The Very Short Introduction series by Oxford University Press has a good reputation for presenting challenging subjects in an easily accessible manner. "Global Catastrophes" by Bill McGuire is one of its very best examples. Originally published in 2002 as "A Guide to the End of the World", it has since been updated to include events as recent as 2005, with a new preface as well as a fully revised text and bibliography.

The book deals exclusively with environmental phenomena rather than man-made, technological disasters. In each chapter McGuire explores the evidence for - as well as the likely effects of - different catastrophes that could, in the near future, put an end to human civilisation, namely global warming, a new ice age, supervolanoes and other tectonic hazards, and lastly asteroidal impact. His mastery of the material is clear, and at every stage he is careful to back up his arguments with facts and figures drawn from scientific studies and computer models. At the same time his style is conversational and makes on the whole for easy reading, although occasionally the analogies he chooses tend to confuse rather than illuminate.

The opening chapter on global warming is the book's tour de force - as well as probably the most relevant for the reader today - providing a succinct summary of the main issues and sources of contention. McGuire pulls no punches, making it clear just how unprecedented is the effect that human industrial activity is having on the global climate, and how our planet is hotter now than it has been for 90% of its history. For any sceptics of climate change, or of its future implications for our civilisation, this will be a potent wake-up call. In complete contrast, the next chapter explores the counter-intuitive (yet nevertheless scientifically plausible) theory that rising global temperatures could in fact trigger a rapid freeze and a return to Ice Age conditions. But regardless of whether we are set for global warming or global cooling, McGuire demonstrates why this is an especially bad period in geological time for us to be experimenting with our atmosphere and climate.

The third chapter - on supervolcanoes and other tectonic events - is similarly well-argued, as one might expect from a Professor of Vulcanology at University College London. One disappointment, however, is the short treatment afforded to the topic of flood basalt eruptions, in particular the Deccan Trap event, which is now thought to have been a contributing factor in the decline and extinction of the dinosaurs. A significant amount of research is now being conducted into these events, which could have been explored further. Finally, McGuire's discussion of potential extinction-level asteroidal impact is both balanced and considered, stressing the catastrophic effect this would have while also underlining the unlikelihood of such an event occurring in the near future.

The book includes 20 images and diagrams, serving to illustrate and reinforce McGuire's points, as well as 2 appendices, summarising the relative frequency of the various threats and plotting the most significant on a geological timescale. The bibliography is thorough, divided according to the relevant chapters, and runs to no less than 65 titles, making this book an excellent platform for exploring the subject further.

All in all, "Global Catastrophes: A Very Short Introduction" is an excellent overview of what is a difficult, unsettling and sometimes contentious subject, and a book that I can highly recommend.

Don't Have Nightmares..., 04 Jul 2006
I've always been a bit of a fan of these Very Short Introductions - as someone who likes to be a know-it-all but has an increasingly short attention span they're perfect. Well this is one of the best I've read - highly informative, readable, packed with facts. A different version of the end of the world is contemplated on almost every page - and by placing the human race in its true timescale, as a negligible speck on the history of the planet, this is guaranteed to make you feel very small indeed. McGuire makes it clear that with most of the catastrophes he discusses, from the obvious global warming to the alarming super-volcanoes, it's a question of when, not if. And he dispenses with the hubristic notion that there's much we can do about it except prepare for the aftermath.

Frankly, makes me want to become an astronaut.

One long chilling revelation, 21 Jun 2007
I would regard this book as a must read for understanding the world we were born into. As an Englishman I also find it leaves a chilling problem; what effect can this rampant exploitation have taken upon the English nation? Where does responsibility lie, especially as he shows the continuity with today's world economy? Ruthlessly meticulous, Davis has destroyed my previously held opinion that the British Empire 'did some good and did some bad' in one brutal reading.

El Nino book, 18 Feb 2005
I thought it was a fantastic work. It is great to see somebody attacking colonialism, for oppressing, people rather, than the usual ignoring of colonial crimes. It gives many details, from Brazil, too China, and states directly teh full horror of what it must have been like to be in the famines, and how terrible and awful they were. Prooving how democracy is right in many ways, I think. It talks of many countries.

History to make you think., 04 Sep 2001
This is first-rate history. Meticulously researched and documented, with numerous illustrations and case studies, and wide-ranging citation sacross the relevant literature, LATE VICTORIAN HOLOCAUSTS shows conclusively that the wealth of the "First World" is almost exclusively based on lopsided trading and imperialist conditions in the late 19th century, coupled with the devastating effects of El Ninyo famines - and at the same time points up the utter myth of "free trade" put about by the liberal establishment (why, for instance, do all the commodities from tropical countries drop in price in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, while all those goods from temperate climates rise?)

Only 4-stars, though, because the criticism of the previous reviewer has some weight. The historical implications of the El Ninyo episodes could also have been considered with relation to the 1879 War of the Pacific between Chile and Peru/Bolivia, in which the war was triggered by the imposition of a port tax in the north by Bolivia on Chile following the economic slowdown of the early 1870s and the effect of the El ninyo on Peru (floods) and Bolivia (drought). Also, Davis could have expanded the thread of his argument with comparisons with French colonialism in Africa in the 1910s/1920s, when exactly the same movements of cash crops led to famine and desperate hunger (as in India/China in Davis' book).

Still, Davis' book is important, timely and excellent. If you want to understand why "economic migrants" have every right to come to the rich countries of the world, read this book.

A relentlessly one-dimensional polemic, 14 Aug 2001
I've read and enjoyed Mike Davis' work before, but with this I'd lost sympathy way before the end. This is not to deny his main thesis, which is hardly new or even particularly controversial - that what we currently refer to as third world countries were systematically under-developed at the expense of their colonial masters. This after all is still happening, and is what the whole globalisation controversy is about. Davis concentrates on the the massive famines at the end of the nineteenth century in India China and Brazil, and argues that they were a result of El Nino conditions. Well, actually he doesn't, because he goes to great lengths, in good Marxist tradition, to set up a definition of a famine as a political event - ie they're always someone's fault. So in the case of India the late nineteenth century famines were the fault of the British administration. Well certainly the attitude of the British, of complacency mixed with racism and backed by a laissez-faire ideology which believed it best not to interfere in these situations - a complex of attitudes seen fifty years earlier in the Irish famine - exarcebated the situation. But the same catastrophe, with comparable death tolls, hit China as well. Ah well, the Opium wars, you know.....China had already been affected by the deadly virus of Western capitalism, so even if China wasn't a colony, it was still all down to the British. And Brazil? More catastrophe, more megadeaths. No problem - Brazil was already part of the London-based capitalist system. Enough said.

So as we turn to the 20th century we should see these trends continue? Well, bit of a problem there actually: the two greatest 20th century famines were unconnected to El Nino, and were in Russia/Ukraine in the thirties, and China during the Great Leap Forward at the start of the sixties. Davis mentions the latter: "the scale of this holocaust is stupefying, and for many sympathisers with the Chinese revolution, inexplicable". He doesn't declare himself to be such a sympathiser - it would have been more honest for him to do so - but quite clearly he is. He sneers at Jasper Becker's "Hungry Ghosts" on this episode as a "Robert Conquest-like expose". Ah yes, Robert Conquest - isn't he the guy who insisted that the actual victims of Stalinist excesses, in the famines and the gulags, was much higher than previously thought? And is it not now generally accepted that he was, um, right? So the nineteenth century famines were the result of the inexorable logic of imperialism, while the thirties famine in Russia goes unmentioned and the famine in Maoist China is perhaps down to Mao's personal inflexibility. The problem, declares Davis, was the lack of socialist democracy. Good old socialist democracy, eh.....as practiced where, exactly?

OK, it's his book, he can write a polemic if he wants, but as a reader I can then decide if I think that someone is so ideologically driven as to be an unreliable guide. I have no problem with criticism of British or any other Western imperialism, but the sheer relentless one-sidedness of it for me in the end proved counter-productive.

Excellent and ground breaking work, 04 Feb 2001
This new work by Mike Davis is an exemplary piece of scholarship and one that forces the reader to consider the world around them afresh. After his earlier ground breaking 'City of Quartz', where Davis challenged how we collectively view urban areas he has equally audaciously attempted to track the dividing point between the first and the third worlds. Few but the persistent readers of the Journal Capital, Nature, Socialism could have predicted that Davis would write such a book. His revisitation of urban themes in 'Ecology of Fear' did not signal this sudden change.

Quite simply Davis explains the divergence of the first and third world's as stemming from the Political Ecology of a series of 'El Nino' events at the end of the nineteenth century. A catastrophic collision of severe droughts with the aggressive imperialism of the Western powers, led to famine of the peoples of the South. Millions of lives were lost as the Western powers took the opportunity to tighten or extend their grip over the resources of countries such as India and China. Davis demonstrates how the previous pre-imperial arrangements warded off the worst of famine, the very arrangements that the new global market had undermined. Time and again, revolts of peasant peoples against the imperial tyranny were broken by the combined might of superior military technology and hunger. Davis does not just recount the statistics, these accounts are of a passion and moral force rarely found in academic writing. Instead of the faceless millions so typical of planetary histories Davis provides a feel for the millions of individual tragedies represent by such calamities.

Shifting from environmental history, to agricultural history and back again Davis is never dull, navigating complex terrain with aplomb. The height of his erudition is the account of the development of the science of El Nino events. Deftly he moves through the complex physics, the shifting paradigms and scientific projects that have formed the account of weather systems that are in use today. Only after this tour de force does he return to the topics in hand to illustrate how it was not the lack of rain but a militarised enforcement of the free market that divided humanity so starkly.

Davis is not only writing a compelling history, it is hard not to see an analogy behind such an example. The conjoining of rampant market forces with severe climate events robbed millions of their lives and their descendants of the chance of a better life. Davis is not issuing guarantees such events could not be repeated. This is a passionate, urgent book that hums with verve and indignation. It is what scholarly books should be informed, educated but profoundly accessible. Do not wait for the paperback.

Alien Volcanoes: don't forget the artist!, 12 Jun 2008
I was surprised (and disappointed) that the author is given only as 'RMC Lopes'. The authors are clearly identified on the cover as 'Rosaly M.C.Lopes and Michael W. Carroll'. Michael not only co-wrote the text, but as a prominent space artist he provided numerous excellent paintings of scenes it is not yet possible to photograph. These are therefore essential to this book, and also make it not only better to look at but enhance the understanding of the reader. This is an excellent treatise on the thermally active planets and satellites of our Solar System covering volcanoes (extinct and active), vents, geysers and cryovulcanism, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.
David A. Hardy, FBIS, FIAAA (co-author/illustrator of THE FIRES WITHIN, FUTURES: 50 YEARS IN SPACE, etc.)

I couldn't put it down!, 04 Sep 1999
I don't do much reading, but this book kept me captivated from the moment I picked it up. Books based on true stories can be dry and uninteresting; however, MacLean combines fact, speculation, and emotion in a way that keeps the reader clamoring for more. I was inspired to read "Young Men and Fire" after hearing Richard Shindell sing James Keelaghan's song, "Cold Missouri Waters" (based on MacLean's book) on the "Cry Cry Cry" CD. After reading this book, I feel compelled to visit the 13 crosses marking the tragic ending for those men on that Mann Gulch hillside.

A fantastic and inspiring story of modern heroism!, 18 Aug 1999
The most important aspect of Norman Maclean's work, "Young Men And Fire," has absolutely nothing to do with the Mann Gulch fire. At the core of this story is a perfect example of modern heroism, as well as an author's inspiring quest to not only lend these fine young men the credit they deserve, but in the process find himself.

A great cross-over between history and fiction, 12 Mar 1999
My husband read this book a few years ago when it was first plublished. At the time I wasn't much interested in what appeared to me to be a story about fighting a fire, probably filled with alot of facts I couldn't understand. It was not until I read an article about MacLean and how he did not publish (or complete for that matter)any of his works until he was in his 70's that I became curious about him. I first read "A River Runs Through It, then went down to our basement to dig out "Young Men and Fire"

Lately I have developed the greatest admiration for those writers who can bridge the gap between non-fiction and fiction. My favorite writer to do this was Mari Sandoz, but MacLean has done it also. This is not the same as historical fiction, which makes up a story based loosely on fact. This is a style the majority of which is based on known facts, but where we cannot possibly know the facts, such as a man's thoughts in the last moments before his death, the author uses, not imagination, but experience and research to fill in these gaps credibly.

While I was correct in my assumption that this book would have alot of information I didn't understand, it took nothing away from it for me. All I can say is, I wish MacLean had started his writing sooner, so that I would have had alot more of his work to read!

One of the best books that I have ever read! Honestly!, 25 Jan 1999
Yong Men and Fire is one of the best books that I have ever read. Norman Maclean brings to life the struggles that we endure during and after a tragety. The struggles of the dead, the survivors, the public and the ones closest to the tragety. And the ones that search for the real truth, atleast as close to it as we can get. A truely wonderful book that deserves to