Reading The Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth - Softcover

Bjornerud, Marcia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0465006841 ISBN 13: 9780465006847

Publisher: Basic Books, 2006

Synopsis

Rare Book

About this title

Review:

"Bjornerud has a rare talent for explaining scientific ideas clearly with intriguing and helpful analogies, similes and metaphors." Nature"

Synopsis:

For readers of John McPhee and Stephen Jay Gould, this engaging armchair read to the making of the geologic record shows how to understand messages written in stone. To many of us, the Earth's crust is a relic of ancient, unknowable history. But to a geologist, stones are richly illustrated narratives, telling gothic tales of cataclysm and reincarnation. For more than four billion years, in sand, granite and garnet schists, the planet has kept a rich and idiosyncratic journal of its past. Fulbright Scholar Marcia Bjornerud takes the reader along on an eye-opening tour of Deep Time, explaining in elegant prose what we see and feel beneath our feet. Both scientist and storyteller, Bjornerud uses anecdotes and metaphors to remind us that our home is a living thing with lessons to teach. She shows us how our planet has long maintained a delicate balance, and how the global give-and-take has sustained life on Earth through numerous upheavals. But with the rapidly escalating effects of human beings on their home planet, that cosmic balance is being threatened - and the consequences may be catastrophic.

Containing a glossary and detailed timescale, as well as vivid description and historic accounts, "Reading the Rocks" is literally a history of the world, for all friends of the Earth.

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0465006841
• ISBN 13: 9780465006847
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 257