If you find yourself enthralled by how singular events can echo through history, altering science, society and even the earth itself, Simon Winchester's "Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded" is a must-read. It's a masterful intertwining of geology, biology, and human narrative around the 1883 eruption, offering a lens on the past that is as informative as it is fascinating.

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Simon Winchester's brilliant chronicle of the destruction of the Indonesian island of Krakatoa in 1883 charts the birth of our modern world. He tells the story of the unrecognized genius who beat Darwin to the discovery of evolution; of Samuel Morse, his code and how rubber allowed the world to talk; of Alfred Wegener, the crack-pot German explorer and father of geology. In breathtaking detail he describes how one island and its inhabitants were blasted out of existence and how colonial society was turned upside-down in a cataclysm whose echoes are still felt to this day.

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