"Originally published in Great Britain in 2003 by Viking"--T.p. verso.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [385]-396) and index.

List of illustrations and maps -- Prelude -- 1. "An island with a pointed mountain" -- 2 The crocodile in the canal -- 3. Close encounters on the Wallace Line -- 4. The moments when the mountain moved -- 5. The unchaining of the gates of Hell -- 6. A league from the last of the sun -- 7. The curious case of the terrified elephant -- 8. The paroxysm, the flood, and the crack of doom -- 9. Rebellion of a ruined peple -- 10. The rising of the son -- Epilogue : the place the world exploded -- Recommendations for (and, in one case, against) further reading and viewing -- Acknowledgments, erkenningen, Terima Kasih -- Index.

"The author examines the enduring and world-changing effects of the catastrophic eruption off the coast of Java of the earth's most dangerous volcano - Krakatoa.".

"The legendary annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa - the name has since become a byword for a cataclysmic disaster - was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly forty thousand people. Beyond the purely physical horrors of an event that has only very recently been properly understood, the eruption changed the world in more ways than could possibly be imagined.

Dust swirled round the planet for years, causing temperatures to plummet and sunsets to turn vivid with lurid and unsettling displays of light. The effects of the immense waves were felt as far away as France. Barometers in Bogota and Washington, D. C., went haywire. Bodies were washed up in Zanzibar. The sound of the island's destruction was heard in Australia and India and on islands thousands of miles away.

Most significant of all - in view of today's new political climate - the eruption helped to trigger in Java a wave of murderous anti-Western militancy among fundamentalist Muslims: one of the first outbreaks of Islamic-inspired killings anywhere."--BOOK JACKET.