Editorial Review:
The Pulitzer Prize-winning view of the continent, across the fortieth parallel and down through 4.6 billion yearsTwenty 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.
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Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 
Extremely well written book!  2008-02-19
I am still reading this book, but I love it so far. I bought it as a text book for geology class at my university and it's such a great book--definitely my favorite textbook ever. It's witty, exciting, poetically written, and makes you keep turning the pages.
Pure Pleasure 2007-12-06
Writing East to West, McPhee released "In Suspect Terrain" when Plate Tectonic theory was still somewhat speculative. "Rising From the Plain', in which he owes a great debt (which he acknowleges) to David Love's mother's journal brings us to the Rockies, and is perhaps his most beautiful book. "Basin and Range" is entertaining, and goes well with "Beyond The 100th Meridian" or "Desert Solitare". "Assembling California" is my sedimental favorite, since I live in California and my friend Richard and I once followed a freshly bought copy down to Mussel Rock off the coast of Colma/South San Francisco. And you have to get this collection to get the 5th book, the name of which isn't, for some reason, yet burned into my memory. Maybe I've only read it 3 or 4 times.
I *have* probably read this entire collection, from to back, in this form, 3 or 4 times, not to mention reading the first four as they were published in The New Yorker (in slightly different form...) AND as separate books.
I give this book as a present. I treasure my copy, and own a second to loan out.
I quote from this book. ("If I had to sum up all of geology in once sentence, that sentence would be, "The summet of Mount Everest is marine limestone"".)
The only thing I can't say that's good about it as that its a bit too abstract, or something, for my 10 year old. I've tried it as bedtime reading a couple of times and he isn't having any of it. James Herriot, Gerald Durrell, J. K. Rowling, J. R. R. Tolkien, Arthur Conan Doyle, etc, he loves, but McPhee's subect, and delivery, is just one notch too dry, I suspect. I love this book. I knew very little about Geology when I started reading, but I've learned a lot from this book, and learned to enjoy the subject so that I can read other books by other writers as well.
Holocene, Pleistocene, Pliocene Hike! 2007-10-16
My thanks to a friend for picking a book I never would have selected in a billion years to read myself. But thanks to his persistence finally read it -- and glad too since I bought it the first time he suggested it years ago -- but only this week made myself read it and discovered I really enjoyed it. I am thrilled with the material on James Hutton which inspired me to explore some of Hegel's Encyclopedia on Geology to find elements of Hutton's work there. Not only did Hutton inspire Darwin, as McPhee says that Darwin says, but I am now going to explore further how Hutton might have influenced the Germans -- I have to check Goethe next. (If any one has already done this sort of exploration let me know!) I also really enjoyed page 88 since for some reason I felt as I read the page that I knew it by heart already! I think I even found myself hearing my friend's voice as I read it.
Thanks also to McPhee for a suggested use of flypaper. Never thought of it that way.
A Delicious Tome 2007-10-13
If you wish to know a lot more about a tough subject, go for this tasty and readable overview by a wonderful writer. John McPhee knows how to cover dense material in such a discursive and anecdotal way that one can open the huge book at any page and have one's interest engaged directly. Mr. McPhee accompanied a variety of field geologists on their travels. His book is a record of both who they are and what they told him. At the beginning of the book you may be daunted by its size, but by the end of the book, you will be sorry there isn't more. This is a truly entertaining way to have your mind expanded magnificently.
Geology for the non geologist 2007-05-08
John McPhee makes non fiction more exciting than fiction. Maybe you have to be looking for brilliant writing, over the top descriptions, in depth understanding and revelatory prose that lifts the curtains of ignorance we all have about the world around us. I first read Assemblying California and then found this volume with his four other companion books on geology in them. Since finishing this book, I am lost and lonely without it. Wow, what a writer.
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