The Eternal Pull of the Fascinating, Deadly Volcano

ADVENTURES IN VOLCANOLAND: What Volcanoes Tell Us About the World and Ourselves, by Tamsin Mather

I live on a hump of pink granite, part of a geological formation that stretches across southern Connecticut, lurching out of the ground here and there like a pod of surfacing whales.

Before my wife and I bought our house, we had an inspector give it a look. “Well,” he said, “your foundation goes down a thousand miles into the Earth — so nothing to worry about there.”

We have been atop this tranquil bedrock for over two decades, and with every year it gets harder for me to imagine living in a place like Iceland or Indonesia — where there is much to worry about, because the solid Earth turns to liquid, ash or gas and flies out of volcanoes.

Tamsin Mather, a geologist at the University of Oxford, has no such difficulty. She has spent her career visiting volcanoes to understand how they work, and she has come to see Earth not as a peaceful world encased in a stable crust, but a globe of barely contained geological storms.

“Adventures in Volcanoland” is organized around trips Mather has taken throughout her career, starting with Vesuvius, which she first visited as a child on a family vacation. Next comes the Nicaraguan volcano Masaya, which she studied as a graduate student, and then volcanoes on other continents.