The Pompeii Pop-Up

Natural History, Dec, 2007 by Laurence A. Marschall

The Pompeii Pop-Up Text by Peter Riley with Dr. Thorsten Opper; design by David Hawcock (Universe Publishing; $29.95)

The Red Volcanoes: Face to Face with the Mountains of Fire by G. Brad Lewis and Paul-Edouard Bernard de Lajartre (Thames and Hudson; $34.95)

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The catastrophic explosion of Mt. Vesuvius on August 24, 79 B.C. not only put an untimely end to the city of Pompeii, but also etched an impression of the enormous destructive power of volcanoes in our collective memory. True to form, Vesuvius erupts from the centerfold of this infernally clever Pompeii primer when the book is opened and its scenes unfold. In the foreground, residents desperately try to outrun the blast, or, with equal futility, cower in houses that will soon be sealed under a blanket of ash. Yet the hot ash that interred them froze time in the city, saving it for archaeologists to uncover two millennia later. Now, thanks to paper engineer Hawcock and writers Riley and Opper (a British Museum curator of antiquities), readers can manipulate 3-D models of Pompeii's old marketplaces, inns, and villas, and explore its monumental forum from the comfort of an armchair. Clearly, Vesuvius was an agent both of destruction and of preservation.

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Volcanoes are also agents of creation, especially at places in the Earth's crust where magma wells up to form new land in the sea. Two of the most active of these are Kilauea, on the Pacific island of Hawaii, and Piton de La Fournaise, on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion. Distinct from stratovolcanoes like Mt. St. Helens and Vesuvius, which explode with catastrophic violence, these so-called "red volcanoes" merely ooze and spray, creating meandering lava flows and fantastic pyrotechnic displays that can be viewed, albeit cautiously, with minimal risk. Two skilled nature photographers, G. Brad Lewis, in Hawaii, and Paul-Edouard Bernard de Lajartre, in Reunion, have devoted years to recording the red volcanoes, creating abstract compositions in earth, darkness, and fire. Daytime views show the delicate texture of cinder, lava, and venting gases, but the nighttime shots, in their simple beauty, are the most compelling. In one, a splash of orange-red lava bursts into the blackness, its tracery suggesting the quiet power of the famous wave woodcut by Japanese artist Hokusai. In another, thin rivulets of lava, looking like the glowing fangs of a dragon, drip from an elongated precipice into the ocean.

LAURENCE A. MARSCHALL, author of The Supernova Story, is W.K.T. Sahm Professor of Physics at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, and director of Project CLEA, which produces widely used simulation software for education in astronomy.