I have a strong interest in natural disaster types of media. They are some of my favorite movies, television shows, YouTube channels, and books. I picked up When Humans Nearly Vanished by Donald R. Prothero hoping that I’d get to hear about the way the volcano erupting changed the environment, about the damage and catastrophe it caused, and about how the world struggled to survive for years afterwards, but the book had a whole lot of extra content that I hadn’t planned on reading about.

Just last week, I posted about my thoughts on skipping to the end of a book, and I’m sad to say that this one joins the list. I am bummed that I found it to be boring, long winded, and full of quotes from other papers and books. About half the book went on about biology and other volcanic eruptions in recent history. And while I enjoy learning about volcanic eruptions, I’d have rather just learned about the Toba Volcano specifically, which is what I thought the book was about. This book was bloated and could have used a good editor to do some pruning.

I ended up rating this 2 out of 5 because the information about Toba at the beginning was interesting, but I don’t recommend reading this as you can find a shorter, more concise version of the information online.

If you’d like to read more about When Humans Nearly Vanished, check it out on Goodreads.

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