Hot and bothered - approach with care

Of the making of books on volcanoes for the general reader there is no end. But The Volcano Adventure Guide is different - a genuine first in the field, to be warmly welcomed. As well as telling you about the geology, history and human impact of the world's volcanoes like other volcano books, it gives chapter and verse on how to visit 20 diverse volcanoes, with practical information ranging from transport, accommodation and local directions to precise suggestions about the best viewing conditions and how to judge acceptable levels of risk. There are detailed maps and plentiful photographs of volcanoes in repose and eruption.

Rosaly Lopes is a highly experienced volcanologist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, whose professional work has been to try to understand volcanism on other planets and moons in the solar system by studying Earth's volcanism. She chose her 20 volcanoes partly because she knows them at first hand. But she applied two other criteria: accessibility and variety of eruption type and danger level. The result is that she covers visits to Hawaii and the western US, Italy, Greece (Santorini), Iceland, Costa Rica and the West Indies. But she omits volcanoes in Africa, Asia and South America; in other words, most of the Ring of Fire around the Pacific Ocean. No volcano in New Zealand, Indonesia, Japan, Alaska or the Andes is described in detail, for example.

Fascinating though her discussions of the selected 20 are, one cannot help feeling that this is too idiosyncratic a choice, especially given her statement that "volcanically speaking", the Ring of Fire "is the Earth's busiest side".

Safety must clearly be a key concern for a book such as this, and Lopes has many exciting and instructive personal stories that bring home the risks of visiting volcanoes. I got a small jolt from her description of Mount Etna in Sicily. In 1978, I stood at the edge of the crater and looked into the steamy depths while holding a handkerchief over my nose against the strong sulphurous gases and wandered around the summit feeling disoriented. A year later, nine tourists in a group of 150 died in a freak explosion while doing the same thing. Lopes was working on the mountain - in her virgin role as a volcanologist - as part of the UK's Volcanic Eruption Surveillance Team. They immediately packed up and drove towards the summit to see if they could help. They met a tourist Land Rover coming down with a gaping hole in its roof where it had been hit by a volcanic bomb. The next morning, the volcanologists saw a group of army trucks descending with the coffins of the victims. "In one evening, Etna taught me that the work of a volcanologist is not all science and adventure. Our science had failed these people, because we still know so little about how volcanoes work."

In Costa Rica, she gives a vivid description of persuading seven colleagues at a scientific conference (none a volcanologist) to join a trip to Arenal.

"Volcano very beautiful at night," a local guide cajoles her. "You can see red lava." After dark, the guide's van breaks down in the middle of a river. Just then there was a loud explosion. "Was that thunder or the volcano?" asks one of the travellers. Lopes thinks it is the volcano but says it is probably thunder. She knows they could be in great danger.

"Arenal was very active, and potentially lethal, but I hadn't done my homework. I had no idea where we were, or how dangerous the volcano was at the time. I knew Arenal discharged pyroclastic flows down its river valleys and we were stuck in one - not only inside the valley but in the river itself." It was a pyroclastic flow that incinerated the town of St Pierre in Martinique in 1902, killing 30,000 people.

"I consider my first visit to Arenal a good example of how not to visit a volcano," Lopes writes. No two volcanoes are alike - that is part of the attraction - and so safety requires that each one be approached afresh.

Learn as much as possible about its current state of activity from the web, she recommends (and gives relevant websites in an appendix). Then go appropriately equipped, follow local advice, use common sense and always remain alert.

Besides being densely informative, most of the book is remarkably well written. But there are far too many typos for a book by a leading publisher (including shameful references to the "Ritcher" earthquake magnitude scale). It deserves to be a huge success, with regular editions, which, one hopes, may include a few Asian volcanoes. I shall certainly take it with me next time I visit Etna.

Andrew Robinson, literary editor of The Times Higher , is the author of Earthshock .