The unpredictable and sometimes catastrophic natural phenomena of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, megafloods and storms along with comets and other extraterrestrial events have all been disturbing and sometimes lethal for our ancestors. Understandably our ancestors have dealt with such phenomena by producing explanations from within their specific cultures, which we now call myths and legends, that is until the advent of science and its methods of investigation provided a more universal understanding with predictive power.

Over several decades now geologists have realized that such myths and legends often recount specific details of events and locations, which are not fanciful creations of the imagination, but can have a ‘ring’ of geological veracity. As a result, geologists have led the scientific investigation of such myths, whilst other academic disciplines have been jumping through all manner of theoretical hoops derived from philosophy, psychology and sociology in their attempts to explain these ancient and powerful ‘stories’. W. Bruce Masse and his co-authors provide a perceptive and well-informed introduction, in which they set the scientific effort in its wider intellectual context. They show just how complex myths can be with their wonderful multi-layered mixtures of naturalism and psychological insight, which can also carry universal truths, despite being set in localized geographical and temporal frameworks.

Masse's essay is just one of 25 contained within this fascinating collection, which describes the search for the underlying geological truths behind a global array of myths. Within the western world we are mostly familiar with the mythology of the classical world of the Mediterranean, although this collection reflects the increasing attention given by geologists to other world-views such as those of the numerous Asian ethnic and religious groups, Native Americans, Australians and Pacific Islanders. These reveal a remarkable amount of information derived from different cultures of corroborative evidence between geological and legendary or mythological events, especially earthquakes in tectonically active regions such as the western ‘Cascadian’ seaboard of North America and the Japanese islands, tsunami in the Australo-Pacific regions, and volcanism in South America as well as the somewhat better known phenomena of the Mediterranean region. The latter is particularly well served by the innovative CLEMENS database which documents environment and natural hazards in Roman and medieval texts.

Apart from the intrinsic value of the individual contributions, the volume also serves as a useful introduction to the scope of the subject and its literature, which otherwise can be difficult to source as it is scattered through journals in a variety of disciplines.