Annals of the Former World
by John McPhee
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Book Summary Information
Author: John McPheeBrand: Baker and Taylor
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-06-15
ISBN: 0374518734
Number of pages: 712
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Book Reviews of Annals of the Former World
Book Review: Annals of the Former World
Summary: 5 Stars
Readers, take a ride with John McPhee and friends on Interstate 80 between New York City and San Francisco. Stop and check the road cuts along the way. Listen as John and eminent geologists talk about analyses of current geologic data. Take in their concurrences and differences concerning plate tectonics and the formation of the earth from its very beginnings. Get to know the geologists in person. Follow along as they reminisce about the history of geology and the people who developed the science step by step. Keep an eye on the passing countryside.
Since they didn't invite us along, sit down and absorb McPhee's "Annals of the Former World." It is a combination of four previous books, plus a little extra. The author is not a geologist, but a writer. It is well that he is. The language of geology and scientific geologic writing is difficult for laypeople to understand. Frankly, technical geologic writing can get pretty boring at times. McPhee makes it understandable. Along the way he enlivens the work with biographical accounts of the geologists involved and some cultural history about the areas traveled. The travel, data collection, and writing spanned the period from 1978 to 1998. The author's interest in geology goes back even further. He has immersed himself in the field to such an extent that the book presents both the breadth and depth of the largely unbounded field of geology.
This is not to say that the book is an easy read. We are fortunate in that McPhee has translated rather than overly simplified. He introduces us to much of the geologic jargon and then uses it. Further, his own language is a cut above the rest of us. Keep a dictionary at hand. However, a standard American Heritage will cover nearly everything, even the geologic terminology. Readers should also turn early and often to the geologic time scale that takes up four pages at the back of the book.
In preparing this book after releasing the other four over a twelve year period, the author edited and updated the material, adding quite a bit of new matter. However, he still kept the basic structure of the earlier books. To guide us through the near 700 pages, McPhee has taken the unusual step of providing two tables of contents. In front of the standard outline version, is a textual overview referencing the applicable pages. Although this tool is useful as a way to start the book, be forewarned that you will get much more out of it when you reread it after finishing the book.
One reason for providing this early overview is that the four books are presented in an order that best leads a reader through the subject. We start by skipping to the Basin and Range country that stretches across Nevada. The second book takes us back to where the journey started following Interstate 80 coming west across the Appalachians and into Indiana. Trust the author, he got it right. The third book gives us Wyoming, which in and of itself is a complete and unique geologic story. The fourth book is titled "Assembling California." The title is apt, like all the titles in the book. We move north to south along the San Andreas Fault and back again, looking at the structure and the impact of the geologically forces that continue to build and destroy.
In another ingenious step, McPhee tells us what it would have been like to travel along Interstate 80 in several different geologic ages. Shorelines change by hundreds of miles; seas appear and disappear; mountains grow and are eroded to plains; and plant life appears, followed by sea life, followed by terrestrial life. Over time the continent is built piece by piece.
These four books left a gap. The Midwest may not be terribly exciting geologically until you dig far into the basement five or six miles below the surface, but the story isn't complete without it. McPhee took along another geologist and filled in the gap just for "Annals of the Former World."
If you are getting the feeling that this book is only about the geology of Interstate 80, plus a north-south trip in California; that is not true. To help understand that geology, the author covers the global history and even goes with geologists to Cyprus, Greece, Colorado, and Arizona. Although the author gives us a few of the objections some geologists have to plate tectonic theory, that theory is part and parcel of this book. He traces current speculation as continents drift apart, come together, and then do it all over again. He covers the fourth dimension better than comparable resources. Most geology books basically ignore geology before that represented by fossil-bearing rocks and only grudgingly go back prior to life forms that walked on legs. That is only a fraction of the history of our earth and the North American continent, about a tenth in fact. McPhee repeatedly reminds us of that and tries to keep events in the perspective of a four billion year view.
When taking a geology class a year ago, I complained to the instructor that there doesn't seem to be anything current and understandable about the geology of southeastern Montana where I was raised. The answer was that I should read McPhee. It was excellent advice. My only regret is that McPhee didn't choose to travel Interstate 90 which comes closer to that area and to where I live now. However, in geologic terms of space and time, "Annals of the Former World" is far better than anything else for the majority of the continent
Summary of Annals of the Former World
The Pulitzer Prize-winning view of the continent, across the fortieth parallel and down through 4.6 billion years
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. The structure of the book never changed, but its breadth caused him to complete it in stages, under the overall title Annals of the Former World.
Like the terrain it covers, Annals of the Former World tells a multilayered tale, and the reader may choose one of many paths through it. As clearly and succinctly written as it is profoundly informed, this is our finest popular survey of geology and a masterpiece of modern nonfiction.
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. The structure of the book never changed, but its breadth caused him to complete it in stages, under the overall title Annals of the Former World.
Like the terrain it covers, Annals of the Former World tells a multilayered tale, and the reader may choose one of many paths through it. As clearly and succinctly written as it is profoundly informed, this is our finest popular survey of geology and a masterpiece of modern nonfiction.
Annals of the Former World is the winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction.
In 1978 New Yorker magazine staff writer John McPhee set out making notes for an ambitious project: a geological history of North America, centered, for the sake of convenience, on the 40th parallel, a history that encompasses billions of years. In 1981 he published the first of the four books that would come from his research: Basin and Range, a study of the mountainous lands between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevadas. Two years later came In Suspect Terrain, a grand overview of the Appalachian mountain system. In 1986 McPhee released Rising from the Plains, a history of the Rocky Mountains set largely in Wyoming. And in 1993 came Assembling California, a survey of the area geologists find to be a laboratory of volcanic and tectonic processes, a place where geology can be watched in the making. Annals of the Former World gathers these four volumes, which McPhee always conceived of as a whole, to make that epic of the Earth's formation; to it he adds a fifth book, Crossing the Craton, which introduces the continent's ancient core, underlying what is now Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska.
McPhee's great virtue as a journalist covering the sciences--and any other of the countless subjects he has taken on, for that matter--is his ability to distill and explain complex matters: here, for example, the processes of mineral deposition or of plate tectonics. He does so by allowing geologists to speak for themselves and an entertaining lot they are, those sometimes odd men and women who puzzle out the landscape for clues to its most ancient past. Annals of the Former World is a magisterial work of popular science for which geologists--and devotees of good writing--will be grateful. --Gregory McNamee
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