Island on Fire: The extraordinary story of Laki, the volcano that turned eighteenth-century Europe dark

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While ostensibly about the Laki eruption in 1783 the authors take on on a tour of other volcanic eruptions around the world, including Katla, Tambora and the year without summer, Krakatau, and of course the then recent Eyjafjallajökull that so disrupted air-travel in Europe.

Time moves fast when you’re getting older. I thought it was only recently that I read about the new book by Alexandra Witze and Jeff Kanipe about the Icelandic volcanoes. I was so surprised when I saw that it came out in early 2015… damn. An important contribution to our understanding of what Saidiya Hartman has described as the ‘afterlife’ of slavery. Zoellner documents in vivid detail the base violence and inhumanity of institutionalized slavery in plantation-era Jamaica. But he also tells a story of irrepressible resistance and self-organization that generated the slave rebellion of 1831… His storytelling ability makes this history extremely readable, if not less painful. ” —Abigail Bakan, Jacobin Brimming with nostalgia, FIRE ISLAND asks readers to contemplate our own legacies and the monumental and minute ways we can impact those around us.Island on Fire is really good even though it is not what I expected at all. I thought it would be another disaster book where it follows a few people as they attempt to run from a lava spewing volcano. A Pompeii redux, if you will. No Laki is more of a slow burn which slowly kills a ton of people through famine and ash. And since it was 1783, there was little anyone can do about it. In his private teachings to his fellow enslaved people, Sharpe emphasized those passages of the Bible explicitly dealing with freedom. Four passages in particular drew his attention: “No man can serve two masters” (Matt. 6:24); “If the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:36); “Ye are bought with a price: be ye not servants of men” (1 Cor. 7:23); “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is nether male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ” (Gal. 3:28). He appears to have neglected all those that seemed to justify slavery or harped upon obedience—the favorite localized theology of the established church.”

Once again, I loved Jane’s beautiful writing and instantly connected to the characters. The book is narrated by 37-year-old Julia after her sudden death, as she watches her loved ones as they grieve her death, and try to overcome loss. The book then shifts to incorporate our understanding of Iceland's 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption. Because the Laki eruption was larger in magnitude and severity than the Eyjafjallajökull eruption of living memory, they make a good argument for how much more devastating a modern Laki-level eruption would be by comparing the two incidents. The air travel groundings and supply chain disruptions definitely rang true because of what we're going through with the COVID-19 pandemic.Tom Zoellner tells the story of Sam Sharpe’s revolution manqué, and the subsequent abolition of slavery in Jamaica, in a way that’s acutely relevant to the racial unrest of our own time. Island on Fire is impeccably researched and seductively readable. ” —Madison Smartt Bell, author of All Souls’ Rising