Ghosts of Vesuvius

A New Look at the Last Days of Pompeii, How Towers Fall, and Other Strange Connections
by Charles R Pellegrino
William Morrow, August 2004
496 pp. 60 b&w drawings throughout
Translation, HarperCollins

*Film rights preempted by "Titanic" film maker James Cameron

Book decription:
GHOSTS OF VESUVIUS - a fascinating archaeologist’s look at Pompeii and its remarkably well-preserved suburb, Herculaneum, as well as an examination of the Vesuvius eruption in comparision with other historically significant volcanic eruptions.

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 obliterated the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. In GHOSTS OF VESUVIUS, paleontologist Charles Pellegrino presents a wealth of new knowledge about these doomed towns -- the people, their last moments, and the aftermath. The book contains new information, including details gleaned from material only now accessible to archaeologists through modern technology, including DNA. By employing the latest in “forensic archaeology,” Pellegrino pieces together long-buried stories of these long-ago Romans and discovers new evidence about their lives.

Skillfully weaving together an exploration of Pompeii with an authoritative study of the consequences of volanic activity, Pelligrino provides refreshingly new and different information on a topic that has intrigued the world for centuries. The lessons learned find disturbing echoes in the present: the strange physics of volcanic “downblast” and “collapse column” were at play in the 9-11 World Trade Center disaster. Dr. Pellegrino, who worked at Ground Zero in the attack’s aftermath, shares his unique knowledge of these forces, drawing a direct link from past to present, and providing readers with a poignant glimpse into the last moments of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers.

Through the modern wonders of forensic archaeology, astonishing facts about the everyday lives of the doomed citizens of Pompeii and Herculaneum have been brought to light, revealing a society that enjoyed "modern" amenities such as central heating, sliding glass doors, penicillin, hot and cold running water -- and a standard of living and life expectancy that would not be achieved again until the 1950s. But these thriving twin cities would be buried along with every hapless citizen in less than twenty-four hours when Vesuvius came frighteningly alive, sending a fearsome column of smoke and fire twenty miles into the sky.

Employing volcano physics, Pellegrino shows that the Vesuvius eruption was one thousand times more powerful than the bomb that leveled Hiroshima, bringing to vivid life the frightful majesty of that volcanic apocalypse. Yet Pellegrino digs deeper, exploring fascinating comparisons and connections to other catastrophic events throughout history, in particular the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. As one of the world’s only experts on downblast and surge physics, Pellegrino was invited to Ground Zero to examine the site and compare it with devastation wreaked by Vesuvius, in the hope of saving lives during future volcanic eruptions. In doing so, he offers us a poignant and unforgettable glimpse into the final moments of our own "American Vesuvius."

A stunning combination of science, history, humanity, and riveting storytelling, Charles Pellegrino’s Ghosts of Vesuvius is an extraordinary accomplishment, an electrifying, edifying, astonishing, and powerful work of literary art.

Reviews:
"The Victorian readers who once thrilled to Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii would marvel at the secrets today’s geologists and archaeologists are wresting from Vesuvius’ long-cold cinders. With the same impetuous curiosity and vigorous style that he brought to his earlier investigations of the Titanic and Atlantis, Pellegrino probes Vesuvius’ mysteries in an expository narrative of unmatched range and color. Weaving together accounts of ancient authorities with groundbreaking research by forensic archaeologists, Pellegrino captures the nightmarish final hours of Pompeii and Herculaneum, from the first ominous appearance of an “umbrella pine” eruption column above the mountain through the final lethal series of surge clouds and pyroclastic avalanches. But in the flash-fossilized remains of victims, Pellegrino sees powerful reminders of the abiding human hope to understand a brutal universe. Those hopes live still both in the science Pellegrino uses to interpret historic volcanic explosions as the distant consequence of the Big Bang and in the startling connections he makes between the two cities buried by Vesuvius in AD 79 and the Twin Towers destroyed by terrorists in 2001. These grim parallels between the deadly physics of volcanoes—collapse columns, surge clouds, gravity bombs, shock cocoons—and the horrors of 9/11 are seen by Pellegrino as a valuable resource for these seeking life-saving strategies to deal with future calamities. A compelling fusion of pioneering science and poignant reflection."
- STARRED BOOKLIST August 2004


"A stunning and magical alchemy of science, philosophy, Bible study and brilliantly detailed on-the-scene reporting, Pellegrino’s book moves effortlessly from the sweeping grandeur of infinite time and space to the briefest moment in the lives of ordinary men. In August A.D. 79, Mt. Vesuvius erupted and famously buried the city of Pompeii and, less famously, the city of Herculaneum. From this node of history, Pellegrino goes off on a sometimes cosmic search for the connections and ruptures
that have shaped not only human civilization but the very course of life on Earth and the universe at large. Pellegrino includes easily understood nuggets of hard science, and his passion for his subject keeps the whole thing together. Rooted in the solid ground of rational investigation and intense research, the book never flies out of control but carries one along from point to point on a tour of Pellegrino’s wide-screen thinking. The emotional heart of the book lies at ground zero in lower Manhattan, where Pellegrino and a small band of volcanologists put their skills to work making sense of the towers’ collapse. As the column of white-hot volcanic ash descended on the ancient Roman cities nearly 2,000 years ago, so the 109 stories of the
World Trade Center came crashing down, burying the dreams and aspirations of another civilization at the height of its power-or so says Pellegrino. This is a book to be savored, reread and passed along to future generations."
- STARRED Publishers Weekly review


About the author:
The author of twelve books of fiction and non-fiction Charles Pellegrino is a crustaceologist, paleontologist, and marine archaeologist. His “recipe” involving dinosaur cells that may be preserved in ninety-five-million-year-old-amberized-flies became the basis for the Michael Crichton novel/Steven Spielburg film Jurassic Park.