Eclipses have stunned, frightened, emboldened, and mesmerized people for thousands of years. They were recorded on ancient turtle shells discovered in the Wastes of Yin in China, on clay tablets from Mesopotamia and on the Mayan "Dresden Codex." They are mentioned in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and at least eight times in the Bible. Columbus used them to trick people, while Renaissance painter Taddeo Gaddi was blinded by one. Sorcery was banished within...

Documents the fifty-year career of Thomas Jaggar, the Harvard-educated volcano science pioneer who founded the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, to share insights into his findings about massive volcanoes in such regions as Yellowstone, Alaska, and Hawaii.