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I barely understood the terminology used in this book and yet I felt compelled to keep reading and finish a 700 page book about rocks. This is an author that can make a compelling story about anything.
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Annals of the Former World #1-4
Annals of the Former World
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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.
Annals of the Former World is the winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for 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.
720 pages, Paperback
First published June 10,1998
This edition
- Format
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720 pages, Paperback
- Published
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January 6, 1999 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- ISBN
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9780374518738
- ASIN
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0374518734
- Language
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English
About the author
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John Angus McPhee is an American writer. He is considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction. He is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the category General Nonfiction, and he won that award on the fourth occasion in 1999 for Annals of the Former World (a collection of five books, including two of his previous Pulitzer finalists). In 2008, he received the George Polk Career Award for his "indelible mark on American journalism during his nearly half-century career". Since 1974, McPhee has been the Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.
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Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 108 votes)
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I had mixed feelings about this book. I'm really glad I read it, but it was a slow read that took some effort. I really enjoyed the science and the storytelling, but the book often spent too much time using words it hadn't defined and too little time telling stories about processes. My favorite parts were the vignettes connecting geology to history - the gold miners in the Sierra Nevadas, the cowboys in Wyoming, even the vacationers in the Delaware Water Gap. (I was disappointed that this vignette was missing from the final "book," Crossing the Craton.) Each book also introduced a new geological phenomenon, which were the parts I suspect I'll remember best. Other parts were tougher to finish. I often struggled to follow the long passages describing how specific geographical places came to be - describing rocks being shoved up, eroding, being covered, flipping, and deformed by other rocks. I get that this is how geology works, but it doesn't always translate to the written page. Also, as I said in my review for "Assembling California," I'd love to see more pictures and maps.
However, for all my complaints, I am now a geology fan and have a much deeper appreciation for the earth around me. I'd guess that's what John McPhee would have wanted me to get out of it.
However, for all my complaints, I am now a geology fan and have a much deeper appreciation for the earth around me. I'd guess that's what John McPhee would have wanted me to get out of it.
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Remember driving along a highway and passing through a road cut where the layers of stone in the hillside rise and descend as you pass. John McPhee began to wonder about these roadcuts and over several years compiled a geologic history of the United States through interviews and feild trips with geology professors from New York to San Francisco. His epic adventure immerses readers in deep deep time, a complex poetry of terminology, and a fascinating array of personal stories. He continually reconnects the geology of the narrative to the reader through frequent references to history and periodic sprinklings of wry humor. And it's not all geology; You'll be amazed by Geologist David Love's family history and thrilled and appalled at the rapid-fire recounts of experiences of the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1988, when slabs of double-decker highway dropped onto commuter vehicles and Candlestick Park shook duriing the world Series.
This is not a strictly layman's book. The language is dense, the concepts unfamiliar, and the few illustrations, diagrams and maps insufficient to clarify much of the text. However, McPhee possesses the sensibilities of both journalist and poet. While the reader may have to soldier through ignornance and inexperience at times, the 660 page journey creates a satisfying understanding of the precepts and questions posed by geologists and geology and a grounding sense of the theory of geological time and the formation of the surface of our planet.
Overall, it makes me feel small and ephemeral.
This is not a strictly layman's book. The language is dense, the concepts unfamiliar, and the few illustrations, diagrams and maps insufficient to clarify much of the text. However, McPhee possesses the sensibilities of both journalist and poet. While the reader may have to soldier through ignornance and inexperience at times, the 660 page journey creates a satisfying understanding of the precepts and questions posed by geologists and geology and a grounding sense of the theory of geological time and the formation of the surface of our planet.
Overall, it makes me feel small and ephemeral.
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Such a difficult book! It took me four months to read, carefully. I was constantly cross-referencing gabbro, the carboniferous period and similar on Wikipedia. It's a dense book. There is a lot of theory and much of it is contradictory; such is science. I've walked through many of the landscapes in the book. It starts with the Pallisades of New Jersey and those were some of the rocks of my youth. There's the Delaware Water Gap which I walked through last year. Much of the book, though, it takes place west of the Mississippi in landscapes I've never been to. Still, captivating, disjointed, mesmerizing. It makes me wish I'd studied with the masters. I want to read the landscape as if it were a book; this is an introduction to just that.
He's a good enough writer. He obviously put a lot of research into the book. Still some of the historical parts feel like he's woven something a little too detailed out of scant facts. Nevertheless, well worth the time spent reading it.
He's a good enough writer. He obviously put a lot of research into the book. Still some of the historical parts feel like he's woven something a little too detailed out of scant facts. Nevertheless, well worth the time spent reading it.
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This is a book of books. The book is an anthology of four previous books and a fifth published for the first time with this book. It covers geology, history, politics and more. It's a travel book and a fascinating look at geologists and their evolving views of the world as plate tectonics rewrote their science.
The broad sweep of the book is the geology of the American continent: how it came to be, how it changed through the ages. The anchor for this look is Interstate 80, running from New York City to San Francisco. Along the way, the reader will find the vast plains, the mountains coming up and wearing away, the sea flooding in and retreating, the ice sheets planing away the soil and rocks to pile them again in new geologic features.
Amidst all of this, John McPhee keeps us reminded that there are two time scales - the slow progressions of geology and the very recent and oh-so-brief lives that we live. He writes of the Donner Party, the exploration of the West, the Gold Rush, the oil boom, the mapping of the Appalachians and so much more and always the lives of the geologists with whom McPhee himself explores the country.
It's not always an easy book, with all the talk of rocks that are hard to conjure, like the basalts, granites, serpentine, gabbro and such, but McPhee writes with such magic that they roll through the sentences without bringing you down to textbook plodding. He also brings the long ages of the geology to human scale with stories of times where the two time scales intersect in earthquakes and avalanches.
It's magnificent.
The broad sweep of the book is the geology of the American continent: how it came to be, how it changed through the ages. The anchor for this look is Interstate 80, running from New York City to San Francisco. Along the way, the reader will find the vast plains, the mountains coming up and wearing away, the sea flooding in and retreating, the ice sheets planing away the soil and rocks to pile them again in new geologic features.
Amidst all of this, John McPhee keeps us reminded that there are two time scales - the slow progressions of geology and the very recent and oh-so-brief lives that we live. He writes of the Donner Party, the exploration of the West, the Gold Rush, the oil boom, the mapping of the Appalachians and so much more and always the lives of the geologists with whom McPhee himself explores the country.
It's not always an easy book, with all the talk of rocks that are hard to conjure, like the basalts, granites, serpentine, gabbro and such, but McPhee writes with such magic that they roll through the sentences without bringing you down to textbook plodding. He also brings the long ages of the geology to human scale with stories of times where the two time scales intersect in earthquakes and avalanches.
It's magnificent.
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What a mind-blowingly comprehensive compilation of writing on a geologic cross section of America through characterizations of off-beat geniuses and possessed rock-hounds. Totally awesome. I was reading part of this while on a bus with students heading East on I-80 through Wyoming and was totally enraptured with the very interpretation through the book of the bleak landscape surrounding me. Who knew I was looking at billions of years in time with a mere 50 minute drive from point to point? That I crossed a gangplank and while I thought I was on flat high prairie I was in fact standing on ancient mountains buried in sand, silt, river rock, and other, older, eroded mountainsides?
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Impressive tour de force. The vocabulary sent my head spinning with many unfamiliar geologic terms. Fortunately he sprinkled in a lot of entertaining anecdotes amid the science. Geology ironically is a pretty young science with plate tectonics only making its debut about 40 or 50 years ago. Even that theory while embraced by most has its detractors who while not rejecting it completely feel it is overused and leads to laziness where "anything goes". Field geologists versus lab work where the advances in the methods of dating rocks have led to greater understanding of seemingly uninteresting landscapes and what lies beneath. I enjoyed his exploration of California with geologist from UCDavis, my partial alma mater. Discussion of earthquakes was involving and frightening. Gold rush, the destruction wrought by hydraulic mining at the end of that brief period was eye opening to me. Humans willing to do anything to exploit resources not a new phenomenon. Still much to learn in this field and he included many caveats when describing the latest theories. Imagination a requirement when building the story of the billions of years of planet earth's variety of physical manifestations. Mind expanding and enjoyable.
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Deserves the Pulitzer! It can be dense at times but McPhee does an amazing job of keeping a traditionally boring subject very readable. Would recomendad Book 3 and 4 as starters rather than the order it’s laid out in but that’s just personal preference
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