The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History

Written by William K. Klingaman and Nicholas P. Klingaman

Narrated by David Colacci

1816 was a remarkable year-mostly for the fact that there was no summer. As a result of a volcanic eruption at Mount Tambora in Indonesia, weather patterns were disrupted worldwide for months, allowing for excessive rain, frost, and snowfall through much of the Northeastern US and Europe in the summer of 1816.

In the US, the extraordinary weather produced food shortages, religious revivals, and extensive migration from New England to the Midwest. In Europe, the cold and wet summer led to famine, food riots, the transformation of stable communities into wandering beggars, and one of the worst typhus epidemics in history. 1816 was the year Frankenstein was written. It was also the year Turner painted his fiery sunsets. All of these things are linked to global climate change-something we are quite aware of now, but that was utterly mysterious to people in the nineteenth century, who concocted all sorts of reasons for such an ungenial season.

Making use of a wealth of source material and employing a compelling narrative approach featuring peasants and royalty, politicians, writers, and scientists, The Year Without Summer by William K. Klingaman and Nicholas P. Klingaman examines not only the climate change engendered by the volcano, but also its effects on politics, the economy, the arts, and social structures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Sep 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781515949299

William K. Klingaman

WILLIAM K. KLINGAMAN holds a Ph.D. in American History from the University of Virginia and has taught at the University of Virginia and the University of Maryland. He is the author of seven previous books, including histories of the years 1816, 1918, 1929, and 1941.

Reviews for The Year Without Summer

[anniik_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was an interesting book that detailed the aftermath of the explosion of Mount Tambora and its consequences for the global climate. Interesting!

[mapg.genie · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Both authors have PhD degrees, one in American History and one in meteorology, which helps to explain the depth of the research and the detail in writing. Then, once I figured out how the book was organized, reading became easier.Mount Tambora exploded in April 1915 and the weather patterns around the world dramatically changed for nearly two years, but no one could figure out that the two events were related. Many theories for the extreme weather conditions were proposed, while crops failed and people were starving.This is a part of history that I would have never learned about except that, as a genealogist, I had ancestors living in New England who migrated to Ohio during this timeframe and I'm always looking for the push/pull factors for migration. Previously I had no idea about the drought suffered in the United States during 1816--the year without a summer, I had assumed that the only reason for crop failure was the freezing temperatures during every month of the growing season. I also had no idea that Europe experienced the opposite precipitation extremes, rain and floods along with the cold temperatures, causing worse famine than in the United States.After the describing the initial eruption, the authors used a timeline approach, following the United States and several European countries during specific time periods, then introduced several prominent people within those countries for whom information is available to tie the story together and better understand the local impact of the weather patterns. Or, as was sometimes the case, reveal the lack of both government and local understanding of the problems.I appreciate the story and am glad I read the book, but it took a little longer to read and sometimes I felt like I was having to plough through a lot of detail.

[bragan_8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In April of 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted spectacularly, throwing immense amounts of ash and droplets of sulfuric acid into the atmosphere. By the next year, a good portion of the world was experiencing summer temperatures lower than any in living memory. Some areas were plagued by drought, others by seemingly perpetual torrential rains. Crops failed, and famine and unrest predictably followed. No one at the time knew what was causing this, although plenty of theories were put forward, and it wasn't until much later that the volcano's contribution was truly understood.This book covers in some depth the effect of this weather on Europe and North America (with a lot of attention paid, in particular, to France, England, and the United States), including its influences on politics, economics, emigration, and literature. The writing is a bit dry, and it gets very, very repetitive, with endless, near-identical quotes from various local weather reports and news sources, in a way that feels more suitable for an academic tome than a supposedly popular work of historical non-fiction. And yet, it's rather compelling, nonetheless, and does leave one reflecting in interesting ways on the precariousness of the world and the highly contingent nature of history.

[setnahkt · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Disappointing, but that’s my fault; I’m used to books about volcanic disasters having lots and lots of geological details, while this one scarcely mentions Mt. Tambora, the protagonist (as it were). First author William K. Klingaman is an American history professor at the University of Virginia who specializes in year histories; previous books include histories of 1919, 1929, and 1941 (as well as books about the McCarthy Era, Abraham Lincoln, and the first century AD). Second author Nicholas P. Klingaman, who I assume is a son or nephew or something, is a meteorology professor at the University of Reading. The book got quite a few favorable reviews when it came out so I was pleased to acquire it, looking forward to discussions of subduction, upper mantle melting, magma volatile content, pyroclastic flow behavior, and atmospheric dispersion. Well, there’s a little of the last but the bulk of the book is “slice of life“descriptions from letters, newspaper articles, and other contemporary comments. Klingaman I focuses on well-known historical figures; making appearances are Stamford Raffles (who was actually fairly close to the eruption, for a European) in the Dutch East Indies; John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Joseph Smith Sr. in the US; Robert Peel, Lord Liverpool, the Prince Regent, Jane Austen and John Quincy Adams (US. Ambassador to England) in the UK; Louis XVIII, the Duke of Wellington (commander of the Allied occupation army) and Madame de Staëhl in France; and Byron, Shelley, and their miscellaneous lovers and hangers-on in Switzerland. Klingaman II is brought in from the wings periodically to make some comment on meteorology; these always seem poorly integrated with the main text and the explanations are confusing.The weather was indeed awful; there was a cold drought in New England and Quebec, with snow as almost the only precipitation; Northern Europe had the cold weather but torrential rains instead of a drought. In both cases crops were annihilated; bread often couldn’t be had but livestock was plentiful (at least initially) since farmers couldn’t feed it and sold it off. Klingaman I tries to relate the weather to personal stories; for example, Robert Peel’s development of a professional police force was perhaps inspired by food riots while he was in Ireland; Jane Austen’s final illness was perhaps exacerbated by the weather; and the germ for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein perhaps came from dismal weeks in Switzerland when the coterie took turns telling ghost stories because the weather was too foul to go out sightseeing. The key word is “perhaps”; certainly the suggestions are not implausible but also not falsifiable (to be far, Klingaman is very discrete about it, just describing the weather and letting the reader draw conclusions).The meteorological stuff is disappointing. I know maps are my particular hobby-horse, but if you are trying to explain how a change in the jet stream might affect the North Atlantic Oscillation one map will serve better than pages of text. What’s more some of the general meteorology seems a little suspect (or perhaps poorly edited?). For example, Klingaman II describes sulfur dioxide injected in to the stratosphere by the eruption where it “…rapidly combined with readily available hydroxide gas – which, in liquid form, is commonly known as hydrogen peroxide – to form more than 100 million tons of sulfuric acid”. Saying the stratosphere as containing “hydroxide gas” and implying that this is somehow a vapor equivalent to hydrogen peroxide is arguably not incorrect but is a pretty weird way to describe it. Later in the book when Klingaman II gets a couple of pages again, he says ice ages are due to “changes in the Earth’s orbit”; I assume he’s talking about Milankovitch orbital forcing which is pretty certainly not the “cause” of ice ages and are not “changes in the Earth’s orbit”; the Earth is orbiting just the way it supposed to.As mentioned, no maps – in fact, no illustrations at all. Pretty thoroughly referenced but by the page and paragraph method; there are no footnotes. The anecdotes are interesting enough and it’s nice to see someone relating historical events to climate; but it would have been nice to have more geology and clearer climatology.

[schmerguls · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This 2013 book tells of the volcanic eruption on Sumbawa in Indonesia on Apr 5, 1815. It was such a momentous catastrophe that it affected the weather all over the world in 1816, causing terrible suffering and starvation because the summer of 1816 was so adversely affected. It was diastrous in many places, including in Baden, and since my great-great-grandparents left Baden in 1817 and came to the U.S., I am wondering whether their leaving Baden was the result of the suffering caused there by the volcano. If so, it can be said the volcano caused me to come to be, since if any of my ancestors were different I would not be me but would be somebody else! Except for that interesting personal effect, I did not find the book too exciting or riveting, since it spends lots of pages simply telling what was said about the weather in 1816 in books and diaries and newpapers. After awhile, that tends to pall and one says yes, we see the weather in 1816 was awful but we don't need to be told that over and over. The book does tell about interesting people, James Madison, Jane Austen, Lord Byron, King Louis XVIII. et al., and what they said about the weather, and what they did and so on, which is of interest. But in general I did not find the book as interesting as the other two books by William K. Klingaman which I read.

[megaden_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Written by a father-son team of an historian and a meteorologist, this book had a good mix of history and science. Although the topic was interesting and the worldwide cultural effects of the eruption were fascinating, the book dragged on, especially through the middle section. In the end it was only pretty good, but the potential was there for so much more