Summer Reading Series: No Apparent Danger

“No Apparent Danger” by Victoria Bruce

**** (4 Stars) = Very good.  I strongly recommend this book.

In the book, Victoria Bruce pieces together eye-witness accounts of two tragic volcano disasters in Colombia.  First are the accounts of the eruption of Nevado del Ruiz in 1985 in which mudflows killed over 23,000 people in the surrounding area.  The second part of this book details the 1993 eruption of Volcán Galeras which took the lives of nine people (including six scientists) who were in the crater at the time.

Whether or not you’re a geologist, I think you’ll find this is an interesting and thrilling read.  Even though this is a historic event where you know the end result, Victoria Bruce did a great job of recounting the events and filling the pages with suspense.  Bruce knows enough about geology to accurately describe the science involved (she has an M.S. in Geology), but she also explains the terms for any readers who are not scientists.

I think one of the take-home messages of this book is that science (and funding for research/technology/etc…) is extremely important.  And even when the scientists have the technology, it’s imperative that they know what to do with that knowledge and being able to bridge the gap between pure science and public policy. 

I enjoyed reading this book, and I would definitely recommend it.  It’s probably not one I would read again (I rarely re-read non-fiction books), but it’s worth a read.

(And, Brittany, thanks for suggesting this book and for letting me borrow it for so long!)