Galeras is a volcano in Colombia, and Stanley Williams 'survived' it because he got caught up in an unexpected eruption. Anyone who has studied earth sciences with the Open University is likely to have heard of Geoff Brown, a vulcanologist killed when a volcano he was studying erupted. This is the volcano and the eruption.

The subtitle of this book is a bit over-egged - no-one can yet 'tame' volcanoes. All that can be done is to try to discover more about their inner workings with the aim of eventually being able to make reliable predictions about when and how they might erupt, so people in the danger zone can be evacuated at the right time.

Although this book is ostensibly about the eruption of Galeras in 1993, it is actually this story interwoven with the story of Stanley Williams' career in vulcanology, and reminiscences of other vulcanologists he knows (or had known - some came to unfortunate ends in the course of their work). It also tells the stories of various historical eruptions and their effects.

I found the interleaving of Williams' own story, rescue and recovery with anecdotes and with accounts of historic eruptions to be slightly irritating, but that is probably just me. On the whole this was an interesting account of what it is really like to study volcanoes 'up close and personal', with some background science of how volcanoes work and the effects that eruptions can have.

This is now out of print, but available 2nd hand from Amazon. The paperback edition is entitled 'Surviving The Volcano'.