Terra by Richard Hamblyn

September 2009, Picador
268 pages, Hardback
Review copy

Non-fiction

Ease of Reading: 4
Level of Information: 5
Yunaleska's recommended rating:♥♥♥♥♥

Terra looks in depth at four incidents in history which involve the four elements. (Anyone notice how I am attracted to books about the earth and the dangers within it?) I requested it because my ability to recollect facts is low, and this seemed like a good way to educate myself about major disasters.

Richard Hamblyn has created a highly detailed, easy to follow work. I enjoyed the way he explored each disaster. First there was a bit of background about the area the disaster occurred as well as the situation of life at that time. Then, through recorded eyewitness accounts he writes a timeline of events. However, he doesn't stop there. He explores the impact of the disaster after the event, how it affected those in the centre of the tragedy (for people lost their lives in all four explored incidents) and how it changed the life of future generations.

I feel that most people will be moved in one way or another by the personal descriptions in this volume. It is all too easy, given the natural disasters I've seen on the news in my short life, to feel the terror behind the witness accounts. There are some occasions where people are mad for trying to save their personal possessions. Thankfully the positive attributes of humanity: our compassion, our ability to help those in need shines through the events which some, at the time, believed to herald the end of the world.

I enjoyed being able to understand the mechanics behind earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and strange weather patterns. There are lots of diagrams, photographs and other illustrations which helped form a more detailed image of the event, and helped explain the written explanations. There were still a few paragraphs which I didn't quite understand, but my brain tends to fog up when scientific explanations are given, so that has nothing to do with Richard's clarity of writing.

Out of all four disasters, the only one I knew about was the volcano of Krakatau in 1883. This book looks at the earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal in 1755, extreme weather in Europe during 1783, and the 1946 tsunami at Hilo, Hawaii. I think it is straight forward which category of earth, air, fire and water these disaster are classed under. An interesting fact is that all four disasters can be interlinked: although it wasn't the main disaster, fire played a large part in Lisbon. One last fact I'll leave you with, is that a tsunami can be as small as one centimetre high.

Liked this? If you want to know how you can increase your survival rate in a disaster, check out Deadly Peril and how to avoid it by Tracey Turner.