Island on Fire: The extraordinary story of Laki, the volcano that turned eighteenth-century Europe dark

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At Literary Hub, read Zoellner on Sam Sharpe, a hero overlooked by history but re-recognized by Jamaica in the late twentieth century With her trademark humor and eloquence, Jane L Rosen transports us to a summer paradise where an unforgettable cast of multi-generational characters sustain each other through every kind of love and loss. On Fire Island is fun and fast paced, but it’s also a beautifully rendered meditation on human connection. Don’t miss this one; it’s perfect.”

The book then shifts to incorporate our understanding of Iceland's 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption. Because the Laki eruption was larger in magnitude and severity than the Eyjafjallajökull eruption of living memory, they make a good argument for how much more devastating a modern Laki-level eruption would be by comparing the two incidents. The air travel groundings and supply chain disruptions definitely rang true because of what we're going through with the COVID-19 pandemic. Remarkable to me was the retribution against white missionaries as well as the massive burning of Baptist and Methodist churches, seen as to blame for the uprising and the loss of income. Only when a leading politician of the island had the foresight to see such activity would only make matters worse for the slaveholders with the British Parliament did the violence abide. While the rebels lost their military gamble, their sacrifice accelerated the larger struggle for freedom in the British Atlantic. The daring and suffering of the Jamaicans galvanized public opinion throughout the empire, resulting in a decisive turn against slavery. For centuries bondage had fed Britain's appetite for sugar. Within two years of the Christmas rebellion, slavery was formally abolished.The Jews were expecting a Redeemer in the time of Jesus. Their own sufferings under Roman domination seemed so great, and this Redeemer had been predicted for them. Reading the Book of Daniel closely, at least some Jews—those behind the first-century Similitudes of Enoch and those with Jesus—had concluded that the Redeemer would be a divine figure named the Son of Man who would come to earth as a human, save the Jews from oppression…” But Sharpe’s uprising was different in its large-scale mobilization and its apt deployment of Baptist liberation theology that brought in more than thirty thousand (some estimates place it closer to 60,000) enslaved people into the plot, catalyzing an acceleration towards the abolition of slavery throughout the British empire. Sharpe’s homiletics gravitated towards biblical declarations of liberation, as Zoellner writes: Some sections weren't the best, however, which is why I only give this book 4/5 stars. They seem to jump around from topic to topic, which may be because this book has two authors. Better editing to stitch topics together and write better transition passages could have remedied these hiccups.

Volcano go boom and everyone dies. You’ve heard the story and seen the movies. But that’s not how Laki in Iceland rolls, and Alexandra Witze and Jeff Kanipe are here to tell you about it. Wowza, what a bittersweet little novel to cap my summer reading :). Thank you so much to Berkley for the copy of On Fire Island by Jane L. Rosen! I will absolutely seek more from this author! With vivid prose, Tom Zoellner captures the horrors of the brutal sugar plantations of Jamaica as well as that brief but transcendent moment when a group of enslaved people sought, against tremendous odds, to transform the island into a space of liberation. Island on Fire offers a haunting parable of how history is made and remade up to the present day. ” —Karl Jacoby, author of Shadows at Dawn I can’t stop thinking about On Fire Island, Jane L. Rosen’sdazzling story of enduring love, gut-wrenching loss and unlikely friendships. I read it with an enormous smile on my face and tears in my eyes—it’s as funny as it is poignant, nostalgic as it is sharp. A beautiful tribute to the summers of our past and to Fire Island. Unforgettable!” Though the 1970s rediscovery of Samuel Sharpe came at the time of Jamaica’s relations with Castro and the US attempts to tamper with national elections, there were also other powerful cultural forces at work… The government declared Samuel Sharpe a National Hero on October 1, 1975, an honor that unleashed a number of others. Sharpe’s story was inserted into the public school curriculum all over the island. His face went on the paper currency.”

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Impeccably researched and seductively readable…tells the story of Sam Sharpe’s revolution manqué, and the subsequent abolition of slavery in Jamaica, in a way that’s acutely relevant to the racial unrest of our own time.”—Madison Smartt Bell, author of All Souls’ Rising In the new rom-com Fire Island, written by comedian Joel Kim Booster and now streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu, the eponymous island is shown in all its summer glory. Located just a train (and ferry) ride away from New York City, this barrier island off the Long Island coast has been an iconic destination for the queer community since the early 20th Century. I found it to be very informative. Not only about Jamaican history in the 1830s but also about the wider context in the world, including politics in Britain. There was still plenty of new information for me, whilst points that were generally well known were not laboured over.