Simon Winchester is a marvelous author. You might be familiar with his excellent books, The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary and The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary. What you might not know is that Winchester's is a geologist, which adds immensely to his telling of Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883. This is not merely the story of a volcanic eruption in a distant land, but an intellectual history of the science of geology suitable for a layman. He also provides a history of the Dutch spice trade in Indonesia and claims (rather astonishingly) that Krakatoa was the event that caused Indonesia to turn against Christianity and toward Islam. For those interested in a focused examination of the volcano and its immediate effects, look elsewhere, but if you like to sprinkle a little history and culture atop your natural disasters, this is a nice read. By the way, I listened to Winchester's own reading of the book, which was excellent.

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