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To promote a wider interest in the science of geology through
organised lectures, field excursions and social activities.
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Annals of the Former WorldbyJohn McPheeFarrar, Strauss and Giroux
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book. Or rather it is five lovely books. The author, John McPhee, is a
well known academic, teaching Humanities at Princeton University,
author of many books and novels and long-established columnist on the
New Yorker. And, flatteringly for geologists, he thinks geology and
geologists are great. In the main the book describes the geological history of the United States. Especially that along Interstate Highway I-80, which runs from New York to San Francisco. But it is also about the geologists who explain the geology to him. And also about the principles of geology, explained with great clarity and imagination. The five books have been produced over the years since 1981. In that year came “Basin and Range” which could be described as a description of the geology of Utah and Nevada. It is, but it is also a history of geology, the story of the discovery of plate tectonics, a biography of Kenneth Deffeyes (McPhee's geological mentor), a history of Nevadan silver mining and a panegyric to the study of the earth. 1983 saw the publication of “In Suspect Terrain” which covers the geology of the northern Appalachians. But it also covers the life of Anita Harris, the USGS geologist who shows McPhee the geology along the I-80 between New York and Indiana. She is the person who correlated the colour of conodont fossils with the temperature they had reached after burial. This has enormous implications for oil exploration as it is the temperature the rock reaches that determines whether the organic matter becomes oil or natural gas. The story of how her work came to be recognised shows the importance of giving your message to the right audience. Doubts about the role of plate tectonics in building the Appalachians show that, in this book, McPhee is a sceptical listener, not someone to become a believer overnight. Hence the title of the book. He doesn’t know enough to have his own opinion but is glad that there are other people who do not go with the flow of geological sentiment. And there is a fascinating history of how the realisation of continental glaciation came to America. The way to recognise glacial outwash is to look for good golf courses! Book 3 - “Rising from the Plains”, was published in 1986 and covers the geology of Wyoming, as seen through the eyes of David Love, another USGS geologist who has had a life from which any number of Western movies could be made. Wyoming is one of the states which has been defined by a ruler on a map - its boundaries are four straight lines. But within the rectangle is some of the queerest geology to be found anywhere. There are mountain ranges here, there and everywhere, trending in the most unexpected directions; volcanoes where there shouldn’t be volcanoes; sedimentary basins formed in the middle of mountains. The geology is unfamiliar to people like us living on the edge of a continent, and it is a pleasure to read such a clear exposition of it as we have here. And, in contrast to many popular geology books, there is no reluctance to talk about economic geology. Or to be condescending towards it. Certainly in Wyoming the exploitation of natural resources has led to many of the discoveries which have yet to be fully explained. Coal, oil, natural gas and sedimentary uranium are, or were, important sources of wealth in the state. David Love was one of the developers of the concept of roll front deposits of uraninite and could have made his fortune in the early 1950’s, but he decided to stay with the Survey. In “Assembling California”, published in 1993, McPhee's mentor is Eldridge Moores. We learn how California and most of the west coast of North America has been formed by micro-continents being plastered onto the continent, conveyed there by continental drift. We learn about the death of the Donner party, crossing the Sierra Nevada, the story of the Californian gold rush and the environmental damage it led to, we follow the San Andreas fault and learn about its characteristics along its length. And we learn a great deal about ophiolite complexes and how they are samples of the bed of the oceans. The last part, “Crossing the Craton” is a short (60 page) essay, published in 1998. It covers the bit in the middle, or rather what lies under the bit in the middle - Illinois to Nebraska. This is a case of finishing things off but even so we learn a lot about what the earth was like in its early history.
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