Island on Fire: The extraordinary story of Laki, the volcano that turned eighteenth-century Europe dark

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While the musings of a woman speaking from beyond the grave may not strike you as beach read material, the writing has a wistful quality that doesn’t come across as morbid or flippant. I have been reviewing various histories of the Caribbean islands and chose this book to learn about Jamaica. Instead, I learned an important chapter in Baptist history that I'd never known before. This is truly a good book for those interested in church history, ethics, and civil disobedience. I've previously reviewed The Sugar Barons covering part of the same topic, but focuses more on Barbados.

The chapter about the effects of Laki on Iceland – the darkness, the illness, the starvation – is nightmare stuff. The effects on Europe at the time also is sobering reading. Europe had watched Toussaint L'Ouverture's 1780s slave revolt in Haiti with horror and feared the violence would spread. Jamaica's governor reached a deal with L'Ouverture that he would not spread anti-slavery propaganda or send troops onto the island. Baptist and Methodist missionaries spread literacy, which created a danger that slaves would become aware of anti-slavery movements in England and elsewhere, which is certainly something Samuel Sharpe hoped to spread. The suicides and deaths at sea were well documented by slave traders and are undeniable. After 1807, the unlimited supply of cheap slaves ceased and the sugar planters had to adjust. By the 1830s there were still 20 slaves to one white person on the island; 300,000 slaves to 18,000 white militiamen. It was in this environment that Sharpe's subversive preaching began to spread converts -- both for Jesus and for a view that a slave was a man. (Interestingly, Nat Turner's rebellion in Virginia also happened in 1831; and he was also a literate slave and Christian preacher.) There are two different versions of this film: a 96-minute Hong Kong version and a 125-minute Taiwan version which focuses more on character development and plot detail.

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Alexandra Witze and Jeff Kanipe highlight the historical affects of Iceland's Laki volcanic eruption of 1783 and how it significantly influenced the field of volcanology. They do a good job of describing the science of volcanoes and what we understand about eruption events while walking us through what many people experienced because of Laki in 1783-1784. This is a good book to read about volcanoes from the vantage point of an under-discussed eruption from the land of ice and fire.

Island on Fire is a gripping account of the five weeks when Jamaica burned in a rebellion led by enslaved preacher Samuel Sharpe. Tom Zoellner recounts these dramatic events with great energy and detail, crucially setting Sharpe’s story—which until now has not been well known away from the island—in the wider context of the struggle for abolition on both sides of the Atlantic. ” —Carrie Gibson, author of Empire’s Crossroads Some sections weren't the best, however, which is why I only give this book 4/5 stars. They seem to jump around from topic to topic, which may be because this book has two authors. Better editing to stitch topics together and write better transition passages could have remedied these hiccups.With vivid prose, Tom Zoellner captures the horrors of the brutal sugar plantations of Jamaica as well as that brief but transcendent moment when a group of enslaved people sought, against tremendous odds, to transform the island into a space of liberation. Island on Fire offers a haunting parable of how history is made and remade up to the present day. ” —Karl Jacoby, author of Shadows at Dawn Going into the post-war period, Cherry Grove became increasingly well-known as an eccentric, outrageous spot, its small-town atmosphere enriched with a vibrant theatrical and drag culture, and ample venues for drinking, dancing and public sex. The Grove's more upmarket neighbour, Fire Island Pines, was developed later, in the 1950s, as a "family-friendly" community, although this label didn't last for very long, despite the fact that numerous gay homeowners had moved there from the Grove in the hopes that it would act as a more discreet enclave. By the 1970s, with the flourishing of an increasingly public queer culture in the years following the Stonewall riots, Cherry Grove and the Pines were both highly desirable locations, frequented by writers and, including Truman Capote, James Baldwin, Patricia Highsmith, Carson McCullers, as well as numerous stars of stage and screen. That the supposed golden age of Fire Island's loose and liberated culture was so short-lived, before the HIV/Aids epidemic began decimating its community in the early 1980s, only further informs its mythology as a fragile, sacred place, lingering defiantly on the fringes of the Atlantic. Dazzling...as funny as it is poignant, nostalgic as it is sharp." —Carley Fortune, New York Times bestselling author of Every Summer After I love the preface about the islanders on Heimaey bravely fighting the lava to save their homes and livelihood, and against the odds succeed. At least to a degree. But the introduction underlines, which I guess was the authors’ intent, how powerless we are to even a relatively minor hiccup from below. Brimming with nostalgia, FIRE ISLAND asks readers to contemplate our own legacies and the monumental and minute ways we can impact those around us.

While the rebels lost their military gamble, their sacrifice accelerated the larger struggle for freedom in the British Atlantic. The daring and suffering of the Jamaicans galvanized public opinion throughout the empire, resulting in a decisive turn against slavery. For centuries bondage had fed Britain's appetite for sugar. Within two years of the Christmas rebellion, slavery was formally abolished. I would definitely recommend this to anyone wanting to know more about emancipation in the British Caribbean and Jamaican history in the 1830s. The meaning of this chain of fire was instantly clear to the watchman, Col. George Lawson, who had been – like the rest of his militia unit – in a state of high tension for the previous week because of credible evidence that the slave population of the northwest shore of Jamaica was about to rise up in revolt. This story is told some of you point of Julia who is passed away recently and it's following her grieving husband best friend Renee and her neighbor around the island and making sure that everyone is ok after she is gone. As she tells the story we get many stories about Fire island and how people fall in love, get divorced and heal.Looking for an unconventional summer story? Toss ON FIRE ISLAND into your beach bag and get lost in an unexpectedly heartwarming story about love, grief, the people that make our lives full. Samuel Sharpe, a slave, was a Baptist deacon whose literacy and commitment to his faith made him dangerous. In 1830s Jamaica, the phrase "Am I not a man, and a brother?" posed a challenge to the white aristocracy that nominally claimed to be Christian but treated human beings like cattle. I listened to an interview where Zoellner compares William Wilberforce's contributions to abolition to Samuel Sharpe's, and Zoellner opined that Wilberforce perhaps has received too much credit. While Wilberforce's noble leadership in the movement to abolish the British slave trade in 1807 ended the capture and tortuous voyage of men and women from Africa to the West Indies, it did not end slavery. Whereas Wilberforce thought it would be the death knell, slavery indeed lingered on in all its brutal fashion. It took actual slaves to ignite the literal spark that resulted in an irrepresible cultural and religious movement to finally abolish slavery in Jamaica and the British colonies. (Wilberforce remained a supporter of abolitionist movement until his death in 1833.) Jill Lepore in New York Burning notes that: “Thirty-five percent of all slave rebellions in the British Caribbean took place at Christmastime.”