Word: krakatoa
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...surface of the ocean suddenly whiten, go still, then become oil-slick smooth. Like an unsuspecting sorority girl in a horror movie, he shrugged it off as insignificant--just part of the region's usual seismic background noise. Ninety-nine days later, the nearby volcanic island of Krakatoa exploded, producing probably the loudest sound heard in human history and killing more than 36,000 people...
...Krakatoa (HarperCollins; 416 pages), Simon Winchester takes an event that happened in a white-hot second and expands it in both directions, filling in the backstory and aftershocks to create a mesmerizing page turner. When Krakatoa erupted, at 10:02 a.m. on Aug. 27, 1883, it vaporized a 2,600-ft. mountain, created waves that killed a woman 2,000 miles away and produced spectacular sunsets as distant as New York City. But Winchester, who wrote the best-selling The Professor and the Madman, finds human stories in the island's troubled history that dwarf even the volcanic...
...Dialogue is minimal. Tarantino's trademark bouts of verbal incontinence and off-color humor are reserved for the script's meticulously detailed stage directions. One scene has The Bride "goin' Krakatoa all over whoever's ass happens to be in front of her at that time." Another calls for "the most disgusting jar of Vaseline in the history of cinema." Whereas in other screenplays the words "they fight" would suffice, Tarantino devotes most of the script?which took him nearly two years to complete?to outlining the action. He lays out precise requirements, dictating which historical genres...
...specializes in science, canvassed supernova experts from Cambridge, Mass., to Santa Cruz, Calif. Says Nash: "I had heard of supernovas, of course, but was only dimly aware of their importance." After a few interviews, she became an aficionado. "The energy released by a supernova makes Mount St. Helens or Krakatoa look absolutely puny in comparison," she declares. "The explosive death of a star is truly worthy...
...letter "My dear Hortense" and ended it "Farewell, my dear Adele"? Where else is it written that 22 of the 633 men aboard Lord Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar were Americans, that the Syrian general Nicator fainted at the sound of a flute, that the 1883 explosion of the Krakatoa volcano was the loudest sound ever heard on earth -- it was clearly noted 2,058 miles away in Ceylon -- that the Spanish Steps, Rome's great gathering place for tourists, are actually owned by France and leased to Italy for an annual fee of one lira (about .07 cent)? Where...