Sometimes it takes an outsider to bring new perspective to a field of study. Charles Pellegrino has made a career of this, skipping with omnivorous intensity between volcanology, archaeology, astrobiology and paleontology.
In his new book, Ghosts of Vesuvius (William Morrow, $26), Pellegrino throws them all in and then some, tracing the physics of destruction at Pompeii back to the origins of the universe and forward to the fall of the twin towers on 9/11.

Oceanographer Robert Ballard is returning to the Titanic, but it’s not the same sunken ship he found in 1985. The deep ocean has been steadily dismantling the once-great cruise liner, and scientists say the process is unlike any they’ve ever seen. “Even if we could stop it, I wouldn’t,”says forensic archaeologist Charles Pellegrino.