Ghosts of Vesuvius: A New Look at the Last Days of Pompeii, How Towers Fall, and Other Strange Connections

[Review of Hardcover edition] This is a tremendously interesting and engrossing book, on many different levels. "GoV", contrary to what the title might lead one to suspect, is NOT just a book about Mt. Vesuvius - it's a tour de force exploration of the effect of volcanic forces on people, on civilizations, on religion(s), on species and evolution in general, on the landscape, and even on the very formation of life itself ... and the author draws upon a wide array of scientific disciplines in order to tell the tale effectively. In similar fashion to Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe", the book opens with a bang ... or more specifically, with the origins of the universe, the formation of heavier elements in the hearts of stars, the evolution of solid matter (planets, asteroids and dark matter), the formation of volcanoes on those planets, and the role that volcanic forces play in the formation of life. From there, the author gives the reader an introductory taste of some of the possible connective threads between volcanic calamities of recent millennia, their appearances in (and possible influence on) religious accounts & beliefs, and how the tripartite aspects of creation, destruction, and preservation directly mimic the aspects of certain deities recurring throughout human history in various different religions ... a theme touched on indirectly by Fritjof Capra's Hindu-slanted poetic paradigm for viewing physical reality "The Tao of Physics". From there, the authors pauses (in Chapter 3, "The Time Gate") to neatly tie together a broad range of different fields of human study into a single and innovatively coherent view of time. In it, the author telescopes backwards, in accelerating fashion, as he zooms further and further outwards - from recent history, through archeology (deep history), past paleontology (biological history), past geology (planetary history), and onward into astrophysics (stellar history) ... with major volcanic events as the connective thread every step of the way. A larger and more robust treatment of this material is also covered in a stand-alone novel entitled "Time Gate". Next, the author reels the reader's time focus back in closer to home again, and delves into the heart of the book, and the author's chief love: archeology. In this case, the primary focus are the twin cities destroyed by Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD: Pompeii and Herculaneum. The author treats us to a veritable smorgasbord of some of the written accounts dating near, relating to, or directly affected by the eruption: * Historical accounts (ex: the Plinys, Democritus, Josephus, Spartacus the Gladiator, etc), * Biblical references (ex: the Council of Nicea that originally collated, edited and winnowed down the scattered accounts of the time into "The Bible" as we know it today), * Legal records (ex: the legal case of the ex-slave Justa who was suing to retain her freedom at the time of the eruption) recovered from the carbonized remains of a large

People who like their reading clear, concise and organized will probably hate this book. To someone like me, who is decidedly "right-brained," it was a joy to read, even though there were times when I put it aside because I just couldn't cope with the sheer amount of information. Charles Pellegrino, who has also explored the wreck of the Titanic and the island of Thera (whose devastation in a volcanic eruption is a possible inspiration for the story of Atlantis), here brings his expertise to the results of the first-century eruption of Mt. Vesuvius as well as the collapse of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. "The behavior of dust-heavy air in Manhattan was governed by the very same physics that sent volcanic death clouds crashing...upon the cities of Vesuvius in A.D. 79," he writes, and the book which would have resulted from this simple comparison would probably have been equally fascinating, although much shorter and more focused. Instead, Pellegrino gives us an extended meditation on catastrophes, human reactions to them and the impermanence of civilizations that is truly breathtaking in its scope, yet also shines a spotlight on intimate human moments and the personal reactions of the author, all the more poignant in the case of 9/11, where he lost people he knew. The bulk of the book is devoted to recent discoveries at Vesuvius, however. Pellegrino's reconstruction of the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, based on what science knows about the physics of it, eyewitness accounts from authors such as Pliny the Younger, and archaeological evidence, is riveting. He also builds up a context in which to place them, a context of slave revolts, religious ferment and amazingly advanced technology, which help to bring the people whose stories he tells to life. This book probably could have been more tightly edited without losing its stream-of-consciousness feel, and Pellegrino's assertions were sometimes hyperbolic and occasionally flat-out wrong (the Pharisees were not a "sect of Temple high priests," but in general non-priests who were often in opposition to the Temple cult), but I still found it enjoyable and well-worth reading.

This book starts out a bit strange, but bear with it. The overall premise is that human life--and all life on earth--has been caused by forces beyond our control, and beyond our full comprehension: earthquakes, meteors, volcanoes, etc. Extinctions of animals, and extinctions of advanced civilzations, have been caused by these same forces. But Pellegrino, an agnostic, stops just short of calling these "acts of God". He wants to, but.... he defines agnostic in the original sense, as "one who does not know". Throughout the book, however, he seems to be in search of God, in search of the ground truth (from archeology, geology, etc.) about the books of both the standard Bible and the Gnostic gospels. If you've ever been fascinated by Discovery Channel/History Channel/PBS shows on the extinctions of the dinosaurs, Bible archeology, or volcanoes, this book is for you. (Plus life during the Roman Empire, some general ancient history, the history of the early Christian church, evolution, 20th century politics, and the Titanic--how many topics can you cram into one almost stream-of-consciousness book??) Major volcanic events throughout history are compared on a scale of kilotons and megatons, with comparisons to the Hiroshima bomb and the Twin Towers' collapse, showing that "acts of God" (or natural forces, if you're Pellegrino) are far more powerful than mere humans can ever devise. The book ends with Pellegrino applying his knowledge of volcanic surges and volcanic collapse columns to the Twin Towers' collapse. After taking you through the essential physics of such things in the Pompeii and Herculaneum excavations, he then applies these principles to NYC... and then reminds you that the collapse of the Twin Towers was far less powerful than Vesuvius, which was in turn miniscule in comparison with the Thera (Santorini) eruption that ended the Minoan civilization. I'm hooked; now I've ordered Pellegrino's "Unearthing Atlantis".

To the carpers below who have a difficult time reading a book whose scope extends beyond its beginning-point and title, the world is a complex place and always has been, and to limit those complexities and interconnectedness is unrealistically to reduce the scope of human understanding of how things work together. In fewer words, ----> :-P <br /> <br />More than almost any other author, Pellegrino has a sense of the diverse interconnectedness between and among events. Where other authors would take the less-complicated (and ultimately less-interesting) task of restricting their focus specifically to the events of AD 79, Pellegrino's vision stretches from Genesis to Apocalypse, from the big bang to the big crunch (or chill, as the case may be), from Pompeii and Herculaneum to the WTC and 9/11. The "connective tissue" linking these apparently dissimilar events is Pellegrino's discussion of force and change -- sometimes rapid and explosive change in the status of an apparently dormant volcano, and other times the change that this explosion wrought not only on the immediate surroundings, but on the story and progress of human civilization itself. <br /> <br />Pellegrino is a surprisingly accessible writer with the ability to have an almost binocular vision of events: one lens is focused on the vast expanse, the "big picture" of not only human history but the history of the cosmos, and the other lens is focused on the individual: Justa, Pliny the Younger, a young girl in the ashes holding not a valuable family idol, but a beloved doll to comfort her in the darkness. Never has this explosion come to life for me in this way; never has my understanding of the effects of a surge cloud or plate tectonics been so clear. <br /> <br />In short, the only carping in which I will engage is to say that to please the carpers, perhaps the book should have been given a different title beyond _Ghosts of Vesuvius_ -- maybe something that mentions how towers fall or the strange connections that can exist among apparently disparate events. <br /> <br />Oh, whoops. Guess it did already.

I've read a number of Pellegrino's books and so I was excited to see that a new one was available. Pellegrino is an author who can combine history, paleontology, archaeology, geology, volcanology, religion and philosophy into a single coherent narrative. I am constantly impressed by his ability to communicate a broad range of seemingly unrelated facts. The book centers on excavations that have been going on for centuries in Pompeii and Herculaneum. While anyone with a basic grasp of Roman history knows about Vesuvius' eruption, more and more about these sites is being understood each year. Pellegrino focuses on the picture that is coming into to focus about how *modern* Roman life looked two millenia ago. He also shares stunning new discoveries about how the Romans perished in the horrors of AD 79. There's other material here, though, and it makes for a compelling read. I didn't expect much new in Chapter Three, which is a timeline of the planet's history (something he's written about before), but Pellegrino offers a fascinating narrative about how horrific disasters have shaped our world. I'm afraid that his discussion of Gnosticism in the early Christian church seemed a tad directionless. As a self-professed agnostic, he really doesn't seem clear on what he wants to *do* with this material. The book closes with a powerful discussion of his work analyzing the aftermath of 9-11 at Ground Zero. While he tells us that the collapse of the WTC towers was only a minute fraction of the devastation of the Vesuvius eruption, the horrors parallel each other in disquieting ways. This isn't a comfortable book to read, but it's deeply fascinating.