A broken plate, an almighty bang.

It's a good thing that I'm a sound sleeper. I wasn't roused when an earthquake in southern Illinois apparently sent tremors as far north as this region, but had I been I would have given up reading for good. I happened to be deep into Simon Winchester's Krakatoa at the time, and the possibility that perhaps I'm getting a bit too involved in my reading material immediately crossed my mind. Life imitating literature would, in this case at least, be a bit too much, even for me.

My edginess stemmed from the depiction Winchester gives the catastrophic eruption of the Indonesian island of Krakatoa in 1883. At the time that it occurred, the islands of modern day Indonesia were under the colonial rule of the Dutch, centered at Batavia (today's Jakarta), on the island of Java. At the very center of the Dutch holdings was Krakatoa, straddling the very busy shipping lanes between the west coast of Java and the eastern point of Sumatra. Unbeknownst to the Dutch masters or the Javanese population, Krakatoa was also at the very center of a tectonic plate boundary, and a very active one at that. The volcano had belched minor eruptions in the past, but on the morning of August 23, 1883, an eruption occurred that vaporized Krakatoa, triggered an immense tsunami, chilled world temperatures for years and was directly responsible for the deaths of at least 30,000 people, as well as coining a new word for a cataclysm.

As Winchester would have it, the eruption also had a lasting impact on global communications, and possibly sparked the growing global Islamic fundamentalist movement. To be certain, Krakatoa's spectacular demise did have global implications (the declining world temperatures on the negative side, the fantastic sunsets that inspired poets and artists to create some fabulous artwork). But even though Krakatoa's eruption occurred at the dawn of the communication age, and Indonesia experienced a surge in sectarian violence, the connection seems more than a little tenuous to me. The lack of much in the way of sources in this portion of the book is telling.

But, thankfully, most of the book focuses on Winchester's strength: the depiction of why and how Krakatoa so completely blew its top. A trained geologist, Winchester describes in loving detail the science behind plate tectonics, as well as the different biological and geological boundaries that led to the acceptance of the theory--too late for the 1883 explosion, but oh so beneficial in predicting upcoming events. The geological details are couched in the history of the region, culminating in a vivid depiction of Java and Batavia in the days leading up to and during Krakatoa's final days.

When I say details, I do really mean details: Winchester is fond of footnotes explaining perhaps too much about certain points, and they're almost all tangential to the main narrative and in some cases, reiterates points made earlier in the text. He's also prone to polysyllabic indulgences, a trait perhaps not so surprising for a man who wrote two histories of the Oxford English Dictionary, but do we really need to say 'ambuscade' when 'ambush' would do? And some readers may find Winchester's humorous asides to be too glib, detracting from an otherwise straightforward narrative.

For all its faults, Krakatoa not only makes some difficult concepts accessible, but entertaining. Illustrated with historical and contemporary images, the book never fails to give a vivid image of the horrendous toll that the volcano wrought on the entire planet. Written in 2003, Krakatoa was published before the massive earthquake and tsunami originating on the northern coast of Sumatra (occurring along the same plate boundary that Krakatoa rests on), but reading it in retrospect it only continues to underscore how interconnected we are when it comes to the Earth's life cycles.

Devils among us.

In some ways, The Devil in the White City seemed an unlikely bestseller. Granted, the subtitle (Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America) promises a virtual trifecta of qualities most Americans can't deny. But in addition to the three M's is a reoccuring theme of...architecture and landscape design?

As far as true crime goes, Larson's 2003 book hits the major points: a well-researched account of an almost unbelievably bold murderer whose total body count will probably never be known. In the person of Henry Holmes, Larson has found a character stranger than fiction. A man of purportedly prodigious charm, Holmes had an early fascination with human anatomy and death that led to many of his victims' being turned into lessons--often as skeletons sold to area teaching hospitals. But the manner and the galling ease by which he killed his victims terrified a nation at the cusp of a new century, once his crimes finally came to light.

But the book isn't really about a crime. Rather, Holmes' activities form a perfect foil to the goings on at the nearby Chicago's World Fair of 1893. In direct contrast to the horrors in Holmes' dark building, the White City of the fair seemed to promise a bright future for America and especially the host city Chicago. But the struggle to get the fair going proved to be almost as dramatic as the murder mystery, which Larson recounts with a dramatic flair. Intrigues, squabbles, sudden deaths, and the prospect of building a magnificent city on a swamp makes for unlikely nailbiters, but Larsen pulls it off. He does tend to get occassionally bogged down in detail and the lack of pictures makes the White City a little harder to visualize, but Larsen's ability make historical figures come across in such vivid characterization generally makes up for such deficiences.

One can't help but have Larsen's successful work in mind when considering Harold Schechter's The Devil's Gentleman: Priviledge, Poison and The Trial That Ushered in the Twentieth Century. Like the earlier work, Schechter mixes a charming young man, a bustling, glamourous city, sex and deviously plotted murders. Here, the story surrounds that of one Roland Molineaux, celebrated amateur athlete and rising businessman, who had recently married a young woman after patiently courting her. Or so it first appears. After one of Blanche's former suitors receives a vial of cyanide of mercury in the mail (and unwittingly gives it to his aunt, killing her), the yellow press pounced on the story. Playing up the sensation aspects of sex, society and power (Molineaux's father was an esteemed Civil War general), the media attention assured that Molineaux's trial would command the entire attention of the nation for years--and gave birth to the phenomenon of media circus trials.

Alas, keeping my attention fixated was more difficult. Unlike Larsen, who focused primarily on the crimes of Holmes, Schechter wades into tremendous detail with Molineaux's trial. There are some high points (especially Blanche Molineaux's spectualarly purple prosed memoirs), but even those points became bogged down in the minutae that characterized the trial. I pushed on through to the end, which held a twist worth waiting for, but I nearly gave it up at several times, in spite of reading more than halfway through. For the legally inclined, it might be worthwhile, but for true crime in a historical perspective, it doesn't quite make an enthralling read.

The harshest peace.

Being a child of the '80s, my personal perceptions of the Cold War consists of mostly stock images and quotes: duck and cover drills in schools, Spam-stocked bomb shelters, ICBMs paraded through Red Square, JFK's 'Berliner' moment, and always, always the image of a mushroom cloud looming on the horizon.

Of course, the intricacies of the Cold War go well beyond a few points in time. John Lewis Gaddis, professor of history at Yale, has completed several hefty tomes on the subject. Fortunately for those of us who aren't well-versed in diplomatic history, Gaddis has provided an approachable yet thorough introduction to the period in The Cold War: A New History, published in 2005. Writing over a decade after the fall of the USSR, there's never any question in Gaddis' text whose decisions would prove decisive. Gaddis' theories aren't going to break a great deal of new ground: still, even those who are well-versed in the events of the day will appreciate Gaddis' ability to explain clearly the motives of both sides in spite of the tangled geopolitics of the time.

Since The Cold War serves as an introductory text, Gaddis did sacrifice details of events and personalities for the sake of theories and grand strategies. Those looking for a detailed description of the Cuban Missile Crisis or Reagan's words to Gorbachev at Reykjavik won't find either here. But in a war that was just as much about battles that didn't happen, Gaddis' work is indespensible in understanding why events played out as they did.

A short work about a long walk.

In this era of fitness mania and extreme sports, the idea of someone walking across the entire North American continent still elicites a sense of awe. We are, after all, talking 3,500 miles across rugged mountains and sweltering plains. Even with modern conveniences such as cell phones and survival gear, it still remains a daunting undertaking. Crossing the continent over a hundred years ago with nothing but a couple of revolvers and five dollars in hand was considered grounds for insanity. Still, that is exactly what Helga Estby and her eldest daughter Clara undertook in the spring of 1896, setting out from their rural Norwegian settlement near Spokane, Washington to New York City, in an attempt to win a $10,000 wager from an anonymous figure. The walk was an epic undertaking, but as Linda Lawrence Hunt chronicles in Bold Spirit: Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America, it was only a small part of the shifts in the political and social landscapes of America at the cusp of a new century.

Like other studies in microhistory, Hunt uses the experience of one, nearly forgotten individual to cast light on the larger shifts within history. The benefit is to make history personal, which is Bold Spirit's strongest point. Estby was a strong, determined woman whose cross-country trek was likely the least of the hardships that she faced in her lifetime. However, getting into the mind of someone nearly 70 years dead is nearly impossible, and Hunt's task is made all the more difficult by the fact that all of Estby's manuscripts recounting her trip were destroyed by her children in the 1940s. This bit of cultural vandalism was a direct consequence of Helga's walk, and makes Hunt's points about the importance of preserving family histories. But it also leaves Hunt with little to go on other than interviews with Estby's granddaughter and scattered newspaper accounts of the trek itself. These hint at Estby's feelings regarding women's rights, the contentious election of 1896 and the cultural mores of Norwegian immigrants in America, among many other topics , but Hunt's attempts to flesh out the whole story comes down to a lot of conjecture. And, more tragically, there's little chance to hear Helga's story in her own words. Still, Hunt's rediscovery of Estby's remarkable endeavor makes for an unique perspective about a pivotal point in history and introduces modern readers to a woman who was well ahead of her time, even if her full story will forever be lost to time.

Camara, check. Road map, check. Revolver and political vendetta, check, double check.

It's summertime, and with the impossibly oppressive proof of global warming and freedom from classroom tyranny comes that great American tradition: the road trip vacation. Sarah Vowell, contributing editor for NPR's This American Life, combines this innocent past time with another, less familiar American tradition: the tendency to off our duly-elected head of state. Hence Assassination Vacation, Vowell's journey into the obscure, sometimes scary and surprisingly bizarre history of presidential hitmen. Vowell is the perfect companion on this particular tour: a self-described Mount St. Helens of verbiage on the subject of assassinations, she roots out the more intriguing chesnuts surrounding the deaths of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. Lincoln's demise is well-documented, but Vowell still finds some surprises. From her sleuthing, Americans may always wonder what the second Lincoln term would have accomplished, but for the word 'sockdologizing.' It's a pity in some ways that Garfield and McKinley aren't better known, as the circumstances surrounding their deaths are truly entertaining: Garfield's assassin, Charles Guiteau, may just be the 19th-century equivilent of Michael Jackson in the painful-to-behold-but-still-compelled-to-watch sense. McKinley succumbed to a mere anarchist, yet his campaign to 'bestow' democracy on nations in which the U.S. had substantial financial interests (ahem), Vowell writes, seems entirely too familiar.

Vowell intersperes the historical bits with her actual experiences following in the occasionally poorly documented (or poorly plaqued) footsteps of president and assassin alike, creating a lively and deliciously sarcastic tone to what really is a discussion of a bunch of dead white guys. If there is any linguistic justice, 'Seward plaque' will immediately become part of the American lexicon. Always keen to hypocracies in history and in the current administration, Vowell provides sharp, biting commentary that will actually keep history students awake in class. Assassination Vacation reminds me of another history/travelogue that I supremely enjoyed, Tony Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War. Pair the two together and you'll have great reading material for the drives between roadside historical markers and tourist traps.

Art history? Bio? All of the above?

I'm not sure that Jonathan Harr's The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece could really be cataloged under any one subject. Weaving elements of art history and biography into the tale of the rediscovery of the lost Caravaggio masterpiece The Taking of Christ, Harr's work sometimes reads like a detective story. While I was reading it, I honestly couldn't put it down, but it was more a couldn't put it down because I wanted to get to the aha moment. It proved somewhat elusive, although there were good moments along the way: the discovery of a mention of the painting in a 17th century ledger, the excitement felt by an amateur art historian as he gazes on the neglected masterpiece, and the descriptions of the volatile man who created it. But it all seemed somewhat, well, padded. There's a little bit of everything: descriptions of art restoration techniques, a bit on Caravaggio, a brief lament over the state of upper education in Italy. The Lost Painting is an interesting concept, but I had a sense that there could be more to the story that Harr's book sort of missed. It's an interesting concept that anyone interested in art would find a diverting read, but for those who want to find out more about Caravaggio or the world of art history, they may find the bibliography to be more useful.

Lose this book.

Believe me, I really wanted this book to be good. It's a clever concept, a collection of all the great books that might of been, a body of ethereal literature tantalizingly out of reach, by many of the greatest writers. So, it's ironic that The Book of Lost Books' should have the subtitle "An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You'll Never Read": for me, it will remain a book that's never read.

One thing about my reading: I make every effort to make it through all the books I begin. I really wanted to get through this one. And it started out fairly promising. The author, Stuart Kelly, writes in his introduction of his obsession with completeness, beginning at a very young age. Originally confined to novelizations of Dr. Who, Kelly's fixation soon extended to all aspects of literature, culminating in this volume. Beginning with Anonymous (who else?) and working through mostly western literature to postmodernist Georges Perec (d. 1982), Kelly muses over lost, never completed, never started, or otherwise not-with-us-here-today works. There are a few gems in his series of essays: the ancient Greek plays of Menander, praised by ancient authorities and thought lost for hundreds of years, were miraculously rediscovered in the twentieth century--only to reveal the great comic playwright was in actuality an overrated hack. Or the case of Camillo Querno, whose (mercifully) lost epic The Alexias was deemed so awful by Pope Leo X that Querno was awarded the post of poet laureate on the basis of his chutzpah in claiming authorship of such trash than from any artistic merit.

Unfortunately, such good moments are buried in dense, uninteresting verbiage that quickly becomes tedious. I pressed on into the account of Gottfried Vilhelm von Leibniz's Universal Encyclopedia before Kelly's pontificating just became too much. For those serious readers (and I mean those who read their Euripides in the original Greek), Kelly's book might hold their interest; for those not interested in dense, speculative prose, leave The Book of Lost Books on the shelf.