The Big ones: How Natural Disasters Have shaped Us

The history of the world, one explosion at a time

Author: Dr Lucy Jones

Publisher: Icon Books / Doubleday Price: £12.99 / $26.95

Release date: Out now For all our increased technological prowess, we remain at the mercy of Mother Nature’s more violent whims. Some of the potency of the disasters she unleashes can be attributed to our expansion – building on flood plains, tectonic plate boundaries, near volcanoes and so on – but in other cases the incidents in question are so massive that there’s simply no getting away from them. Such is the case here, in which worldrenowned seismologist Dr Lucy Jones examines a number of particularly devastating natural disasters, such as the Laki Eruption in Iceland in 1783, and the catastrophic flooding of the Mississippi River in 1927, among numerous others – including, ominously, the ‘Big One’ that’s scheduled to hit Los Angeles. The Big Ones prides itself on being a call to action, but like any relatively minor project aimed at an exponentially wider goal, there’s an unavoidable air of futility about it – this book alone isn’t going to change government policy. Even so, if taken on its own merits as a well-written and researched account of nature at its most lethal, there’s a lot to enjoy here.