Mountains of Fire

'If Michael Palin had been a volcanologist, this is the book he would have written' LITERARY REVIEW'Gripping' THE ECONOMIST 'Wonderful' PETER FRANKOPAN 'Like a thriller ... This is terrific' SPECTATOR 'Beautiful ... bursting with poetry, with storytelling' WERNER HERZOGWe are made of the same stuff as the breath and cinders of volcanoes. No matter where we live on the planet, these fiery mountains have long shaped the path of humanity. World-famous volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer has worked at the crater's edge in the wildest places on Earth, close enough to feel the heat of the lava. In Mountains of Fire we join him on hair-singeing adventures from Antarctica to Italy, to learn how deeply our stories are intertwined with volcanoes.

What the French adventurer Jacques Cousteau was to the hidden world under our seas, Oppenheimer is to the hidden, molten world bubbling under our feet., Gripping ... [reads] like a thriller ... Perhaps one final attribute of a volcanologist is that he should be a good storyteller. Oppenheimer is better than good. This is terrific., A fantastic account of the power and importance of volcanoes to history. Clive Oppenheimer takes us on a wonderful tour of some of the world's best and least known volcanoes in a book that will make all readers want to become volcanologists., Oppenheimer weaves together science, history and culture into a book that is far greater than the sum of its parts. It is also a darn good read ... The gripping narrative and stylish descriptions make this a real page-turner. If Michael Palin had been a volcanologist, this is the book he would have written... All lovers of adventure stories, travel stories and the science of our living planet can rejoice., Elegantly weaving derring-do with insights into the mechanics of how volcanoes work ... fascinating ... What makes this book stand out isn't its poetry or scientific explication, but all the ways Oppenheimer finds to connect the majestic lives of volcanoes to the ephemeral lives of people ... The overall result is a scientific memoir that is unusually full of human feeling and myth ... We can't all travel the globe to risk our lives at the crater's edge, but we have Oppenheimer's prose to get us nearly there.

Clive Oppenheimer is Professor of Volcanology at the University of Cambridge, where he has been based for 30 years. His research seeks to understand how volcanoes work and to probe the connections between eruptions, climate and society. He has conducted fieldwork around the world at the crater's edge or hunting for the far-flung deposits of Earth's greatest eruptions. He has also made two documentary features with legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog, INTO THE INFERNO (Netflix, 2016) and FIREBALL: VISITORS FROM DARKER WORLDS (Apple TV+, 2020).