I loved this book! Nearly every rock I found around the home where I grew up in Missouri contained a fossil sea shell because that land, currently so far from any sea, had once been under one. Those fossils and a trip to the Grand Canyon inspired my life-long amateur interest in geology. I have a small library of those “Roadside Geology of [insert state]” and “Geology Underfoot” books. This book is a sort of roadside geology of the whole United States based on the author’s trips across the country on I-80, accompanied by renowned geologists. It not only explains the geology of the USA, but also the fascinating history of the science, and provides interesting biographies of geologists whose work has advanced the science. McPhee’s writing is so perfect and beautiful that all of this science, history, and biography is easy to understand and as gripping as an adventure story, but as sublimely gorgeous as the best poetry. This is a masterpiece of naturalist writing. I wish someone would make and publish a huge coffee table version of this book with tons of photographs. I wish someone would do a TV documentary series reenactment of this book. I want to take this trip!

Ok this was another I-know-its-random-but-i-liked-it book. Geology is a realm i knew literally nothing about. In an attempt to remedy that, I did some brief research and came up with this book. I got the book for the Geology, I stayed for the writing. This book could be measured in pounds. The premise: seven hundred pages of nonfiction geology in United States. It sounded only slightly drier than dust, and I approached it warily. I was delightfully wrong. John McPhee's craft reminds me most of Steinbeck. (Side note, this may be the nudge up get me to finally read Steinbeck's nonfiction that's been on my shelf for years.) His book is a tapestry of character sketches and history, storytelling and journalism. I wanted to meet old geologists, and drive in a pickup truck across I-80 and drink coffee and look at rocks. Although it's technically scientific journalism, this book moved me like a story. Actually, it had more flavors and savors than much of the fiction I read. As the quote on the back cover by A O Scott says "a deep philology of the continent... surely a classic." I agree. I'm delighted that this book won a pulitzer prize, and I will this again.

This is the equivalent of college survey courses in geology and the history of geology. And like such courses it is sloooow going at times but worth the effort. You probably have to have more than a mild interest in the subject matter to start with in order to stay with it.

The expression "it's written in stone" couldn't be more true than the story told in this magnificent tale of one writer's journey across a continent in the company of some of the world's leading geologists.

Mr. McPhee isn't afraid of using the correct scientific terminology, isn't worried that the verbiage might be over the heads of many readers. The result is a satisfying read that doesn't insult the intelligence of the reader because, above all else, his writing style is both informative AND entertaining, without any need to "dumb it down" into monosyllabic pap.

The story unfolds kaleidoscopically, beginning in New Jersey, then away to the West along Highway 81, through many unlikely times and places such as an old silent-era Mack Sennett movie, Butch Cassidy's Hole-In-The-Wall gang and a world series baseball game interrupted by a devastating earthquake, and even a multi-million-dollar silver find in what was suppoed to be an exhausted tailings pile.

From the professor of geology trying to inspire fresh new minds in the classroom to the weekend rock hound, to the armchair surfer just looking for a thick and well written tome to help pass rainy days, this book is an excellent choice.

It took me a year, but that might as well be a second on a geologic scale. Time's so inconsequential it might as well be tomorrow.

Deep Time:

Take a field trip through North America's Basin and Range province, stretching East to West from Utah to California and South to North from Mexico to Oregon, and you're in a land being pulled apart by Tectonic Forces to someday becoming an arm jutting out from North America into the Pacific Ocean. Baja and California will become first a very long peninsula then later a archipelago west of the continent. Our world is indeed changing all around us. If you really love reading about Geology and Geography then John McPhee's Pulitzer Prize winning 1998 book "Annals of the Former World" may be just what you're looking for. It's actually like reading 5 shorter books on different aspects of geology: regional landscapes, exotic features, exploring the craton and even California*. But no matter what your interest are, if you tackle this monumental work of over 700 pages be prepared for lots of technical terminology in the Earth Sciences and Geography along with some interesting bits of cultural-history, biographies of various geologist and what frontier life was like in the various regions covered. Some readers may not like McPhee's frequent philosophical or biographical passages, that can be quite long and cover a lot of ground, but his inner thoughts just reflect his passion for geology and all the related sciences'. For me this was a long, tough but rewarding read. Some portions of the book flowed along smoothly while others left me feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the author's lengthy and technical writing style, so unless you're up for a very challenging read you might want to look elsewhere. But I, for one, found this to be an enjoyable book that took me to remote location around North America, the Globe, and back into Earth's Deep Time exploring the origins of our landscape, where it came from and where it's going. McPhee's writing is very descriptive, giving you a clear picture of the places he, and his geologist friends, were traveling through. There aren't many illustrations in the Kindle edition; a few photos, some charts and maps, so my iPad got a real workout as I looked up various mountain ranges and other geological regions. But it became clear to me that if I were to take a motor trip through the western United States I would want to have a friendly geologist with me just to help me understand what we were looking at. All features on the Earth have a long history and it helps to have some idea of their origins and the events that led to their present condition. In this book you'll learn about sea mounts and hot-spots, plate tectonics and continental drift, how mountains grow and erode away, how seas come and go and how long all this has been going on. Be sure to read the author’s Afterword: “A Narrative Table of Contents”, it will explain a lot of questions you may have. In my case I read it after but it would also make a good introduction to the author and book. The science in this book was cutting-edge in 1998 but things are always changing and new theories can spring up almost overnight. Over the past decade new observations have lead to new ideas and new ways of looking at the land and its history. But things in geology change at a very slow pace, so whatever “dated” material there may be in the text shouldn’t make any difference to the general reader. If you're interested in learning the history of land formations, diamonds, glacial till or just plain old rocks, than "Annals of the Former World" is a good bet! I had no technical or downloading problems with this Kindle edition.

*As far as I can tell the text was also published as 4 or 5 different books, one for each chapter.

Last Ranger

You know, I never thought I'd love a 700 page book about geology. Luckily, we can all be wrong sometimes. Wonderful book, beautifully written.

This is one of the most amazing books I've ever read! John McPhee tells stories within stories so fascinating, and educating, that I simply could not stop reading. I had to stop at the end of chapters to force myself to go on with the business of life and give my poor old eyes a break. The 660 pages took slightly over 3 weeks to complete, and, I wish there were more. Incredible reading!

I adore this book, and wish there was an audiobook version of it (maybe there is and I've just sucked at finding it). McPhee is, to my mind, anyhow, the best natural history writer out there, and this omnibus edition of his geographical history of the United States (excluding, if memory serves, Hawaii) proves it. It is, in places, a slow read, which fits with the subject...I tend to use this for bedtime reading when I feel to braindead to try and contemplate something like Umberto Eco, Unamuno, or another tough author who has a first or last name beginning with U, as they are, normally, the toughest to read, however rewarding, and melt my brain enough to allow sleep.

An instant classic of nonfiction, this book is simply a masterpiece. A book that shows us the earth we live on in fascinating detail and history. From the Precambrian to the San Francisco earthquakes of the twentieth century, John McPhee illuminates the vast amount of history under out feet. If you've ever had an interest in rocks or continental history, or wanted to explore how mountains came to be, this is a book you must own. Not only does it explain some complicated theories of geology, McPhee does it with a prose so vibrant, fresh, and elastic, that it is always a joy to read. I thoroughly recommend this book to the curious-minded, or anyone who's ever looked at a mountain and said WOW.

A tour de force. Ostensibly a popular study of the geology of the United States along I-80, it's really the author's goal to teach all of us why geologists fall in love with geology. I'd always thought geology was "just rocks" until I read this. But McPhee takes you into the lives of his geologist guides, teaches you about the big breakthroughs in the science, and takes you through some geological events, some slow (like orogeny, one of my new favorite words) and some fast (the Loma Prieta earthquake). You learn a lot, but there are poetical passages in which he just lets the luscious, metaphorical terminology of the science wash over you; don't try to understand every paragraph word-for-word.

This is broken into five sections, four of which were previously published separately. One can read a section on its own, take a break, and then come back to this huge tome.

I’m glad I’m not beyond the age where books I read can change the way I see the world. If that is an age you can reach, I don’t want to. I can’t even drive down the highway now without seeing something as simple as roadcuts in a whole different light.

This was McPhee making a study of that place where language and the earth overlap. Beyond excellent.