What They Reveal about Earth and the Worlds Beyond
Starred review from October 25, 2021
“Volcanoes are capable of doing things that verge on the supernatural,” writes journalist Andrews in his enlightening debut. Volcanoes have a “terrible reputation” of being destructive, and in service of putting them in a new light, Andrews takes readers on a tour of some strange and fascinating examples of “the magic they make and the secrets they unearth.” He covers Kilauea, the volcano in Hawaii that erupted in 2018, as well as the supervolcano that gave rise to Yellowstone National Park between 17 million and 2 million years ago. Andrews also spotlights Ol Doinyo Lengai, a volcano in Tanzania that he describes as “one of the most peculiar... in the entire solar system” because it spews out black lava, plus a slew of undersea volcanoes more active than those found on land. There are also volcanoes on Mars, Venus, and the moons of Jupiter, he shows, and suggests that studying these interstellar volcanoes can “help us ask better questions about the universe.” Andrews does a superb job making complex geology accessible to more casual readers, and offers vivid descriptions of the forces behind both active and ancient volcanoes. As entertaining as it is informative, this is science writing done right.