Credit: BOB & IRA SPRING/CHERYL HASELHORST/BOB RUDSIT

It is 20 years ago this month since Mount St Helens was transformed from a symmetrical cone of a mountain into a smoking crater. Its eruption killed 57 people and millions of animals, and decimated the landscape around it for hundreds of square miles. Mount St. Helens: The Eruption and Recovery of a Volcano by Rob Carson (Sasquatch Books, $19.95) tells the story of the event, from the preliminary, mile-high bursts of steam and ash seen throughout April, when a crater first began to open (inset, left), to the eruption itself (inset, right), its immediate aftermath, and the way in which life has slowly returned to the area.