Ghosts Of Vesuvius

A fascinating look at Pompeii, Herculaneum and the Vesuvius eruption in comparison with other historically significant volcanic eruptions, including the World Trade Center disaster. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, which obliterated the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, was a disaster that resounds to this day. Now palaeontologist Charles Pellegrino presents a wealth of new knowledge about the doomed towns – and brings to vivid life the people, their last moments, and the aftermath. The lessons learned from modern scrutiny of that ancient eruption produce disturbing echoes in the present. Dr Pellegrino, who worked at Ground Zero in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack, shares his unique knowledge of the strange physics of volcanic 'downblast' and 'collapse column', drawing a direct link from past to present, and providing readers with a poignant glimpse into the last moments of the 'American Vesuvius'.

An examination of the disasters at Pompeii and Herculaneum discusses what forensic archaeology and new findings in volcano physics reveal about modern events, including the "collapse column" at the World Trade Center.

Explores the social, political, cultural, and religious life in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, destroyed in a volcanic eruption in 79 A.D. and not rediscovered until the late seventeenth century.

Classical culture belongs to us all: whether as academic subject or as entertainment, it constantly stimulates new ideas. In recent years, following Gladiator’s successful revival of the ‘toga epic’, studies of the ancient world in cinema have drawn increasing attention from authors and readers. This collection builds on current interest in this topic, taking its readers past the usual boundaries of classical reception studies into less familiar—and even uncharted—areas of ancient Greece and Rome in mass popular culture. Contributors discuss the uses of antiquity in television programmes, computer games, journalism, Hollywood blockbusters, B-movies, pornography, Web 2.0, radio drama, and children’s literature. Its diverse contents celebrate the continuing influence of Classics on modern life: from controversies within academia to ephemeral pop culture, from the traditional to the cutting-edge. The reader will find both new voices and those of more established commentators, including broadcaster and historian Bettany Hughes, Latinist Paula James, and Gideon Nisbet, author of Ancient Greece in Film and Popular Culture. Together they demonstrate that rich rewards await anyone with an interest in our classical heritage, when they embrace the diversity and complexity of mass popular culture as a whole.

The rediscovery of the Roman cities overwhelmed by the rage of Vesuvius is one of history's most extraordinary adventure stories. Pompeii Awakened revels in that adventure, and tells of the re-emergence of a long-vanished cosmopolis which profoundly inspired a later age - from its arts and architecture to its science, sex and religion. When Herculaneum, Pompeii' s sister in disaster, was located in 1709, that first discovery launched a frenzied scramble for buried treasure. Then in 1755 Pompeii too rose from its crust of volcanic rock, and the science of archaeology was born. Whereas Herculaneum had artistic, political and philosophical impact, the later discoveries at Pompeii spoke rather of domesticity - of cuisine and household architecture, tools, gardens and religion. To this day it is the only site to show what daily life was like in antiquity. However, the full story of Pompeii consists not just in its uniquely preserved classical villas and votives, but in the powerful response it evoked in the European cultural imagination. Here are the English, whose wealth, wet weather and classical education fostered a passion for Naples and its rediscovered cities. We read of Sir William Hamilton discussing priapic cults with his near neighbour, the dilettante Richard Payne Knight, and of how the famous love affair of Emma Hamilton and Admiral Nelson saved the Heculaneum papyri from the French. Here too are the hosts who arrived from across Europe, and then from America - engineers and artists, dreamers and poets, photographers and cinematographers, whose reconstructions and remembrances of Pompeii have never ceased to resonate. Judith Harris brings the doomed city vibrantly to life. Pompeii breathes again through her account of the diverse people who sifted through its remains to catch a glimpse of themselves in the past. From the poetic souls who found a majestic melancholy in Pompeii's shatttered walls , to the tub-thumping Victorian preachers who denounced the city as akin to Sodom and Gomorrah, Pompeii Awakened uncovers many fascinating stories - of sex, science, love and death. The author has spoken to experts on three continents, flown over Pompeii in a hot-air balloon, delved into ancient diaries and descended deep underground to assess the latest discoveries of a lost world . As the sleeping city re-awakens in her hands, Pompeii casts its spell once more, bewitching those who seek to unearth its buried secrets.

Drawing on the voices of atomic bomb survivors and the new science of forensic archaeology, Charles Pellegrino describes the events and the aftermath of two days in August when nuclear devices, detonated over Japan, changed life on Earth forever. To Hell and Back offers readers a stunning, “you are there” time capsule, wrapped in elegant prose. Charles Pellegrino’s scientific authority and close relationship with the A-bomb survivors make his account the most gripping and authoritative ever written. At the narrative’s core are eyewitness accounts of those who experienced the atomic explosions firsthand—the Japanese civilians on the ground. As the first city targeted, Hiroshima is the focus of most histories. Pellegrino gives equal weight to the bombing of Nagasaki, symbolized by the thirty people who are known to have fled Hiroshima for Nagasaki—where they arrived just in time to survive the second bomb. One of them, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, is the only person who experienced the full effects of both cataclysms within Ground Zero. The second time, the blast effects were diverted around the stairwell behind which Yamaguchi’s office conference was convened—placing him and few others in a shock cocoon that offered protection while the entire building disappeared around them. Pellegrino weaves spellbinding stories together within an illustrated narrative that challenges the “official report,” showing exactly what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and why. Also available from compatible vendors is an enhanced e-book version containing never-before-seen video clips of the survivors, their descendants, and the cities as they are today. Filmed by the author during his research in Japan, these 18 videos are placed throughout the text, taking readers beyond the page and offering an eye-opening and personal way to understand how the effects of the atomic bombs are still felt 70 years after detonation.

Every rock is a tangible trace of the earth’s past. The Story of the Earth in 25 Rocks tells the fascinating stories behind the discoveries that shook the foundations of geology. In twenty-five chapters—each about a particular rock, outcrop, or geologic phenomenon—Donald R. Prothero recounts the scientific detective work that shaped our understanding of geology, from the unearthing of exemplary specimens to tectonic shifts in how we view the inner workings of our planet. Prothero follows in the footsteps of the scientists who asked—and answered—geology’s biggest questions: How do we know how old the earth is? What happened to the supercontinent Pangea? How did ocean rocks end up at the top of Mount Everest? What can we learn about our planet from meteorites and moon rocks? He answers these questions through expertly chosen case studies, such as Pliny the Younger’s firsthand account of the eruption of Vesuvius; the granite outcrops that led a Scottish scientist to theorize that the landscapes he witnessed were far older than Noah’s Flood; the salt and gypsum deposits under the Mediterranean Sea that indicate that it was once a desert; and how trying to date the age of meteorites revealed the dangers of lead poisoning. Each of these breakthroughs filled in a piece of the greater puzzle that is the earth, with scientific discoveries dovetailing with each other to offer an increasingly coherent image of the geologic past. Summarizing a wealth of information in an entertaining, approachable style, The Story of the Earth in 25 Rocks is essential reading for the armchair geologist, the rock hound, and all who are curious about the earth beneath their feet.

“A wonderfully rich, witty, insightful, and wide-ranging portrait of the two Plinys and their world.”—Sarah Bakewell, author of How to Live When Pliny the Elder perished at Stabiae during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, he left behind an enormous compendium of knowledge, his thirty-seven-volume Natural History, and a teenaged nephew who revered him as a father. Grieving his loss, Pliny the Younger inherited the Elder’s notebooks—filled with pearls of wisdom—and his legacy. At its heart, The Shadow of Vesuvius is a literary biography of the younger man, who would grow up to become a lawyer, senator, poet, collector of villas, and chronicler of the Roman Empire from the dire days of terror under Emperor Domitian to the gentler times of Emperor Trajan. A biography that will appeal to lovers of Mary Beard books, it is also a moving narrative about the profound influence of a father figure on his adopted son. Interweaving the younger Pliny’s Letters with extracts from the Elder’s Natural History, Daisy Dunn paints a vivid, compellingly readable portrait of two of antiquity’s greatest minds.