About this title: 'A dazzling achievement. Richard Fortey is without peer among science writers. ' Bill Bryson'The Earth is a true delight: full of awe-inspiring details...it blends travel, history, reportage and science to creat an unforgettable picture of our ancient earth. ' Sunday TimesThe face of the Earth, criss-crossed by chains of mountains like the scars ...
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Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780006551379ISBN:0006551378
Description: Very Good. Light wear to the extremities, contents tight and clean Nice, tight, clean copy. All items ship from Gig Harbor, Wa within 24 hrs! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Date Published: 3/7/2005
ISBN-13:9780006551379ISBN:0006551378
Description: New. 0006551378 Brand New Book With Remainder Mark. May Have Slight Shelf Wear. In-Stock Now For Immediate Secure Packaging & Delivery wear on DJ. read more
Edition: Illustrated.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books USA
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780375706202ISBN:0375706208
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. Tight binding with clean text. Cover has slight shelfwear. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 429 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780002570114ISBN:0002570114
Description: Good. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Vintage Books
Date Published: 2005-11-08
ISBN-13:9780375706202ISBN:0375706208
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780375706202. read more
Edition: Illustrated.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780375406263ISBN:0375406263
Description: Very good. No dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 448 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. First American Edition. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780375706202ISBN:0375706208
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Edition: NEW ED
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780006551379ISBN:0006551378
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 520 pages. (520 pages) this paperback of the 'sunday times' bestseller reveals how the earth became the shape it is today. 78 illustrations, (24 colour ) with index edition new ed (Paperback) read more
Description: Good. Book shows minor use. Cover and Binding have minimal wear and the pages have only minimal creases. A tradition of southern quality and service. All books guaranteed at the Atlanta Book Company. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Date Published: 01/03/2004
ISBN-13:9780002570114ISBN:0002570114
Description: Used-Good. Book in good or better condition. Dispatched same day from warehouse. Please email with any questions for quick response. read more
Description: Fine; Collectible. Excellent condition. First american edition. Appears unread. No writings/underlines/highlights. Pages are very nice and clean. Free track! Satisfaction guarenteed! Fast ing! read more
"Is it possible for a book to be utterly fascinating and yet, at the same time, a perfect cure for insomnia? I never would have thought so, until I read this one.
That does sound horribly contradictory, and yet it is true. Reading this book, I found myself drawn in by the power of Fortey's words and this obvious enthusiasm for the subject. He's a paleontologist by trade, but his era of expertise goes so far back that it's practically geology anyway. And geology is what this book is all about.
There are those who believe that there are forces beyond our ken that shape our lives. Some believe that the universe itself is alive, filled to the brim with some kind of formless substance that wants us to have what we want. Others attribute great influence to the motion of non-terrestrial planets - just recently I saw a warning the Mercury was in retrograde, and that such apparent motion would spell disaster in communications-related endeavors. Other people believe there are gods, or ghosts, or fairies whose wishes and whims have decided who we are and who we will be. But Fortey knows what's really going on.
Fortey knows it's the rocks.
Not just the garden-variety ones you pick up in your garden, no - the real rocks. The gneiss and the schist and the granite, the great, lumbering tectonic plates, relentless in their motion across the face of the Earth, carrying the continents on their backs. The churning, unknowable mantle that holds it all up, revealing only the tiniest glimpses of itself through the effluvium of volcanoes. The Earth tells us who we are and who we will be, for it is the motions of the Earth that made our world what it is. It gave shape to the continents, it has raised and lowered mountains, created and unmade deserts a hundred times over. The rich and fertile fields in which we grow our crops, the barren wastelands that we avoid because we know that they are places where we do not belong - all of those were created by the engine of plate tectonics. Billions of years of relentless motion, of continents smashing into each other, coming apart and then colliding again, have conspired to create the thin, almost evanescent period of time in which we live. And it will continue, long after we are gone, without ever having bothered to notice that we are here.
This book is humbling, to say the least. When you think that the Appalachians used to be mountains that rivaled the Alps and the Himalayas, that they were the product of not the most recent supercontinent, Gondwana, nor the one before that, Laurasia. The gentle, rolling hills of the Appalachians, along which thousands of summer and weekend hikers travel, were born three hundred million years ago in the creation of Pangaea. Time, wind and rain wore them down to what they are today, but they stand as evidence of Earth's deep history. Though not quite as old as the Grenville rocks of Central Park, remnants of mountains formed a billion years ago, before life was more than a thin film of algae on a hypoxic sea.
Fortey writes well. It's hard to overstate how important that is when considering a book meant for the general audience. Not only can you tell that he obviously loves his subject, but you can see that he is a good and devoted writer, who spent a great deal of time thinking of ways to communicate the literally unthinkable amount of time necessary for the motions of the Earth to have put things where they are today. Geologic events are slow and hard to picture in our minds eyes, but he tries. He tries to get into your head the vast temperatures and pressures that operate just a few miles below where we sit right now, and the utterly alien environment they create. He brings to life the arguments and battles that went on between geologists who tried their best over centuries to untangle the folded and twisted stories of the rocks and figure out how they came to be the way they were. The story that Fortey is telling is four and a half billion years in the making, a timespan that we simple humans cannot truly grasp.
And he does have an excellent way of phrasing his points. In talking about the hot springs of Italy in which the ancient Romans lounged, he says, "These springs were the exhalations of the magmatic unconscious." In reminding us that the movements of the Earth determine where we can live, what animals we can raise and what crops we can grow, he says, "The geological Unconscious cannot be denied, for it still guides the way we use the land, and rules the plough. We are all in thrall to the underworld." Finally, in a phrase that evoked Sagan in my mind's ear, he says, "In this way, the depths intercede in our superficial lives: there are unseen and unbidden forces, as indifferent to the fate of the sentient organisms living above them as the distant stars." The man has a way with words, that much is for sure.
For all that this is the story of our world and, therefore, ourselves, it is a hard book to keep up with. Indeed, I found myself nodding off more than once, no matter that I wanted to keep reading about the manner in which the Colorado River cut through the ever-rising plateau through which it coursed. The book, I believe, skirts the edge of Popular Science and Specialist Science. Fortey doesn't skimp on the technical language, and seems to be talking to an audience that already has a pretty good grasp on the terminology and concepts of geology. The readers that he's after in this book are the ones who used to be called "rock hounds" when they were kids, and who know a gneiss from a granite. Which I, technically speaking, do not.
While I do love science, and find the whole history of plate tectonics fascinating, I never got into geology as deeply as I did other sciences. And that's not to say that I never will - if anything, this book made me look more closely at the rocks I see around me and wonder at their provenance. The granite facing of buildings all the way to the simple sand of a baseball field - they're all ancient in different ways and have fascinating stories. When I read the book, though, I was lacking in a certain entry-level understanding of the science, and that was probably what made it such a tough book to get through.
So if you're a rock hound, or know someone who is, pick up a copy of this book. If you like to break your brain thinking about the vast expanses of time required to make a planet on which Homo sapiens can be the species it always wanted to be, this is the book for you. If you are having trouble getting to sleep and you aren't fond of using medication to send you off to slumberland, well... This book probably wouldn't hurt."
"This is a thick book about geology, focussing on plate tectonics and covering volcanoes, mountain formation and fault lines. There are some beautiful photos too and useful diagrams. I was also interested to read about the geology of many places I've visited and to read background information to the several recent tv shows on geology. The book is interesting, engaging and very informative, but I felt the author made too many digressions that didn't add to the reader's experience or knowledge. In A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson made a lot of digressions, but I felt they always added to the book."
"A fascinating introduction to geology. Geology books didn't attract me as potential for a great read until I read an early review of this one. A vast area of knowledge which was vague to me turns out to be endlessly fascinating. Highly recommended, as are Professor Fortey's other books: especially fond of the trilobite he is."
"The Earth is a big, fat (480 page) book about geology. Richard Fortey writes extremely well and it's an impressive attempt to make a fairly dense subject exciting.
I have to admit though I nearly didn't finish it; by about halfway though I'd had about as much as I could take of schist, gneiss, nappes and the endless litany of different places, geological periods and minerals that every new page seemed to require. So I put it down for a few weeks.
But eventually I built up the willpower to finish it off, and I'm glad I did; there's plenty of interesting stuff in there, like the fact that the rocks of England and Scotland were formed on different sides of the Atlantic - or at least a previous ocean that lay between previous versions of Europe and America. Or the fact that in university laboratories, geologists have built vast machines that can squeeze minute samples of rock to the point where they mimic the temperatures and pressures found hundreds of kilometres below the earth's surface."
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