From: andy@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Andy Michael USGS Guest)
Newsgroups: sci.geo.geology
Subject: Re: Planet Earth
Date: 28 Dec 1992 10:14:03 GMT
Organization: Stanford Univ. Earth Sciences
NNTP-Posting-Host: pangea.stanford.edu

In article <1hj6tqINN76c@morrow.stanford.edu> andy@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Andy Michael USGS Guest) writes:
>In article <1992Dec26.155349.27561@mailer.cc.fsu.edu> cain@geomag.gly.fsu.edu (Joe Cain) writes:
>>	Has anyone more than perused the new book "Planet Earth" by
>>Cesare Emiliani? It seems to be an interesting tome, but at first
>>glance seems like written by a nut and/or a flamboyant Italian. It
>>has material all the way from science and religion, basic physics,
>>meteorology, and geology (planetary, historical...) to biological
>>evolution. 107 of the 718 pages are tables.  (Cambridge U. Press,
>>1992) 
>>
>>	It seems to have many historical notes and humor, some good,
>>much supercilious, but in the sections I have read and know about have
>>not found any outlandish ideas or obvious errors. There are some
>>either odd or new-to-me terms used. e.g. "siderosphere" seems to apply
>>to the core.  
>
>We did buy his book.  My wife took some classs from him as an
>undergrad and from what we can tell he may be one of the few people
>capable of writing such a book (and believing that he is capable of
>it :-) ).
>
>>	I want to learn more about historical geology and biology so
>>my main question is whether there are any off the wall sections that
>>might be better learned elsewhere. I find it hard to believe that one
>>person can be expert in such a broad range of subjects to the detail
>>presented.
>
>I'll check out the seismology sections and see how they are.  I would
>bet in print he was careful to get things correct.

I have looked over the seismology sections and they're really quite
good.  Even with a book this long to cover so much material he pretty
much has to move through things quickly.  So there isn't a great deal
of depth to the seismology section, but if you read it slowly and
carefully you will learn a lot.  There was only one explanation that
I don't particularly like (why Love waves are dispersive, but its
one of the tougher concepts in seismology for most grad students).

I suspect that for any single topic you are interested in there
will be better specialty books, but as I will discuss below that
isn't the point of this book.

One other criticism is that he left both Wadati and Benioff out of
his list of important discoverers.  I would have thought subduction
zones rated this.  But again, when you are trying to be this broad
some choices are going to have to be made and I can't say that mine
would necessarily be better.

The impressive thing about this book is that he is trying to put all of
science in a framework that relates to the earth because of the
importance of treating the earth as a system in light of problems like
global climate change.  This is an important task and its great to see
someone take a shot at it.  It also makes it fairly different from
tomes like Asimov's "Guide to Science" which also covers a lot of
ground in one book.  When we first saw this book in the U of Miami
bookstore it was teamed for a course with a National Academy of
Sciences report on Global Climate change.  This report makes a very
persuasive case for the importance of earth system science which I had
previously considered to be the latest buzzword to sell stuff to
congress.  So while a lot of other people are talking about the
importance of this Cesare has gone and written the textbook for it.  My
hat is off to him.

Andy
Xref: sparky sci.geo.geology:2609 ca.earthquakes:1491