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Out of the Crater |
List Price: $45.00
Your Price: $45.00 |
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Reviews |
Description:
The title of this book is a slight misnomer, since author Richard Fisher seems to get out of a volcanic crater only long enough to board a plane bound for another one. This is a professional rather than personal memoir, although Fisher's wife of nearly 52 years, Beverly, pops up engagingly in several chapters. Fisher lyrically describes the physical landscapes in which he did his field work, amply revealing his own inner life--in particular his quiet conviction that the earth is a sacred place with workings human beings may study and marvel at but never fully comprehend. A volcanologist specializing in pyroclastic rocks (the kind shot out of a volcano during its explosive phases), Fisher was a professor of geology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, from 1955 until his retirement in 1993. In this memoir, he lucidly chronicles the evolution of his knowledge and career as he moves from one otherworldly site to the next. The lava smoldering in remote regions of Hawaii and the enormous crater in which the Italian city of Naples is situated are evoked with vividness. Fisher conveys the romance of volcanology to the general reader without dumbing down the science of his fascinating profession. --Wendy Smith
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