Annals of the former world
By: John McPhee
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 1998
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 695
ISBN-13: 9780374105204; 9780374518738
Subjects: Geology
Description: "Twenty years ago, when John McPhee began his journeys back and forth across the United States, he planned to describe a cross-section of North America at about the fortieth parallel and, in the process, come to an understanding not only of the science but of the style of the geologists he traveled with." "Like the terrain it covers, Annals of the Former World tells a many-layered tale, and the reader may choose one of many paths through it, guided by twenty-five new maps and the "Narrative Table of Contents" (an essay outlining the history and structure of the project). Read sequentially, the book is an organic succession of set pieces, flashbacks, biographical sketches, and histories of the human and lithic kind; approached systematically, it can be a North American geology primer, an exploration of plate tectonics, or a study of geologic time and the development of the time scale."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes index.
Table of contents: title: Basin and range; title: In suspect terrain; title: Rising from the plains; title: Assembling California; title: Crossing the craton.