Status
Call number
Collections
Publication
Description
To geologists, rocks are beautiful, roadcuts are windowpanes, and the earth is alive-a work in progress. The cataclysmic movement that gives birth to mountains and oceans is ongoing and can still be seen at certain places on our planet. One of these is the Basin and Range region centered in Nevada and Utah. In this first book of a Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, the author crosses the spectacular Basin and Range with geology professor Kenneth Deffeyes in tow. McPhee draws on Deffeyes' expertise to dazzle you with the vast perspective of geologic time and the fascinating history of vanished landscapes. The effect is guaranteed to expand your mind. McPhee's enthusiasm is infectious, as he provides one of the best introductions to plate tectonics and the New Geology. His elegant style is more pleasing than ever with narrator Nelson Runger's smooth, enthusiastic delivery. Runger mines the book's rich veins of poetic prose and subtle humor-and the result is pure gold.… (more)
Media reviews
User reviews
I think the problem is that McPhee, as he admits, loves the poetry, the sound of geology. This love of the sounds gets in the way of his actually explaining things in a useful fashion.
As a primary example, the book could use
Along the same lines, the book really needs some with explanations of exactly what the various rock terms used mean and, more importantly, what their significance is.
Finally the standard set pieces on deep time and plate tectonics are somewhat tiresome to anyone who knows this stuff.
The one interesting fact I learned that was immediately processable was that over 50% of mineral deposits are hydrothermal --- water dissolves a motley collections of various ions, then, when the temperature and pressure are just right, a particular species of salt will precipitate out, forming a vein of some mineral.
There was enough interesting to justify reading or listening to the others essays in Annals of the Former World, but that's pretty much only because I feel I need to learn more geology, explained from a variety of angles.
I sure as hell didn't read geology books...
This "author" has no concept of how to tell a story, much less a
What disappointment.
In this volume the author spends much time with Prof.
The author interweaves an explanation of geologic concepts and a sketch of geologic history and the human history of geology and understanding the environment. The rest of the series is anticipated.
There is some discussion of the Basin and Range as a spreading area in which, at some point, a new sea will open up, just like the Red Sea and the Great Rift Valley from Israel to Kenya.
Of the volumes in the series this is the most uneven; its ending isn't even really much of an ending, leaving the author and reader kind of hanging in Winnemucca, Nevada.
But still an interesting exploration into the geology of America.
I think this was a series of New Yorker pieces, which would certainly explain some of the style. As a book, it lacks a coherent narrative thread. In particular, the geomorphology of basin and range (a new concept to me,
The beginning of the book has the feel of a travelogue. A Theroux, maybe even HST piece (HST meets the last sun-crazed silver miners?), of gentle companionship and wandering through backwoods America. Midway it moves more towards a geology textbook. This is when it really starts to take off, although I'm unsure of the audience. A handful of foreign geologists? Sophomore students? But the urbane New Yorker reader with clean shoes, do they know the geological background or care enough about the arcane added knowledge? The chapters on 18th century Edinburgh, Hutton, and the invention of geology; on silver-mining and recovering old mine wastes; or best of all, the impact of plate tectonics on geology in the 1960s. I knew (fortunately) all of these things before picking up the book: but I realise now I'd never really understood plate tectonics, or appreciated just how young ocean floors were until reading this.
I was reminded in the end of Sebald's 'Rings of Saturn' (no bad comparison); it's 'a walk outdoors with one of your smartest friends'. A little directionless, but all of it fascinating.
Awards
Language
Original publication date
Physical description
ISBN
Local notes
DDC/MDS
557.9 |