Volcanoes around the world have their own legends, and many have wrought terrible devastation, but none has caught the imagination like Vesuvius. We now know that immense eruptions destroyed Bronze Age settlements around Vesuvius, but the Romans knew nothing of those disasters and were lulled into complacency—much as we are today—by its long period of inactivity. None of the nearly thirty eruptions since AD 79 has matched the infamous cataclysm that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum within hours. Nearly two thousand years later, the allure of the volcano remains—as evidenced by its popularity as a tourist attraction, from Shelley and the Romantics to modern-day visitors.
Vesuvius has loomed large throughout history, both feared and celebrated. Gillian Darley unveils the human responses to Vesuvius from a cast of characters as far-flung as Pliny the Younger and Andy Warhol, revealing shifts over time. This cultural and scientific meditation on a powerful natural wonder touches on pagan religious beliefs, vulcanology, and travel writing. Sifting through the ashes of Vesuvius, Darley exposes how changes in our relationship to the volcano mirror changes in our understanding of our cultural and natural environments.
Gillian Darley is a writer, broadcaster, and architectural journalist.
Title: Vesuvius (Wonders of the World)
Author: Darley, Gillian
ISBN: 9780674503779
Binding:
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Publication Date: 2015-05-04
Number of Pages: 256
Weight: 0.2711 kg
A lively biography of the mountain best known for swallowing Pompeii and Herculaneum… Vesuvius is an entertaining guide to the volcano’s impact on European culture, ranging over its influence on religion, science, philosophy, art, literature, and music. -- Amy Henderson * Weekly Standard *
[R]eaders will enjoy this attractive little book as an armchair travel guide to Vesuvius along the paths of history. -- David Keymer * Library Journal *
The terrifying meditations on our own mortality are compensated by the vivid lives that have unfolded for so many centuries on the mountain’s slopes (most of them lives in which Vesuvius has been threatening but not fatal). As a book, Vesuvius promises to be just about irresistible. -- Ingrid Rowland, University of Notre Dame
It’s brave to write a longue durée history of anything, and here it has been done magnificently. There was much in every part that was new to me. -- Martin Rudwick, author of Bursting the Limits of Time