Supervolcano: The Catastrophic Event That Changed the Course of Human History: Could Yellowstone Be Next

I love volcanoes. This is a cautionary tale. Scientists are finding more Supervolcanoes than ever thought existed. This book is well written and gives the reader a scary look at what a supervolcano can do. When this one erupted about 75,000 years ago, the eruption nearly wiped out the human race. Toba is sited on the island of Sumatra, famous for the 2004 tsunami. The author has done his research and the narrative is smooth and cohesive. I have this book in my science library where it has a prominent place. I learned many new things and I am delighted to have this book. Thank you for a great and enjoyable book. Interesting. Informative. Good read. Learn geology. There are hundreds of supervolcanoes worldwide. This book is about Toba. The last eruption almost wiped out the human race 75,000 years ago. Sara Howard, Author of "Something Funny Happened on The Way to The Moon" and "The Biggest Explosions in The Universe".

I was fascinated with earth science ever since my first encounter with it, especially when I had a class in it before HIgh School. This is a great book! Chock full of fun information as well as necessary info (without being alarmist). I really enjoyed reading it, and so I highly recommend it.

SUPERVOLCANO - The CATASTOPHIC Event That Changed the Course OF Human History. by John Savino & Marie Jones. New Page, '07 review by Micheal Sunanda. Pt 1, I lived on Kilauea volcano a decade seeing red hot lava flowing into the sea there & hiked into its dormant crater 3 times, both very exciting & studying volcanoes first hand. I head the authors on Coast to Coastam talk show, so charming i got the book. Finally a new in-deep earth science geology book about monster volcanoes expanding our awareness of Cataclysmic Evolution now with many smaller earth changes happening simultaneously. Volcanoes are earth's most suddenly creative hot explosive scary event & place making land, gases & ash blowing far & near, even causing mass extinction in history of earth's evolution. The authors compare big eruptions of last 50 years, are small compared to Toba supervolcano' in Sumatra, Indonesia 75K years ago, They use Toba & Mt St Helens radically contrasting the global shock waves of past & possible coming supervolcano eruption. SV explains many kinds of big & super-volcanoes. This very readable, dramatic, comprehensive? & scientific text has some charts & B/W illustrations: showing craters, fault-lines, destruction, trends & 6 types of volcanoes: flood or plateau, shield V; cinder cone, composite or strato V; V cone & caldera". Also under sea V & fault-line eruptions. They present a new theory of evolution `the BOTTLECK' - explaining how human life was nearly erased & few survived on earth after Toba Supervolcano. Also other extinctions were caused by super-volcanoes, that could happen again?!

So much for Uniformitarianism! It now seems certain our history is tied to Earth history, and that cataclysm has been a significant force! Although science takes a lead role in the narrative Supervolcano is not your ordinary science book. It blends history, genetics, geology, and ancient myth, and tells the story of an event - the Toba eruption -around 70,000 years ago that changed the world and helped create what and who we are today. As a habitual reader of science books, most of which are directed at a scientific oriented audience, I must say this book is one of the best. Jones and Savino make reading science (and history) a pleasure. For anyone interested in volcanoes or the origins of mankind Supervolcano is a must read. I also urge the authors that their next book should be about the catastrophic events that caused mass extinction at the end of the Ice Age.

What makes this book both so interesting and terrifying is that the possibilities for a supervolcano going off in the NEAR FUTURE is very high. First, there is yellowstone,30,000 years overdue, then in California, signs that another supervolcano is active. We could spend the rest of the review listing other volcanoes, but I will leave it to you to buy this both fascinating and frightening book....just one more supervolcano site....Toba, Sumatra...where are all of those 7 and 8 and 9 quakes happening right now? right in this supervolcanoes back yard, oh by the way, it is close to being due again, the last time this supervolcano went off, it killed off about 90 percent of the human population in the whole world !!!!!!!!!!! Not for the faint of heart. Beautifully, fascinatingly terrifying science !!!!!!