Narrated by Nelson Runger

This audiobook is a pentalogy of:

1 Basin & Range (duration: 6:55:47)
2 In Suspect Terrain (duration: 6:33:15)
3 Rising From The Plains (duration: 7:17:00)
4 Assembling California (duration: 9:31:07)
5 Crossing the Craton (duration: 1:43:31)

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

1 Basin & Range
The first of John McPhee.s works in his series on geology and geologists,Basin and Range is a book
of journeys through ancient terrains, always in juxtaposition with travels in the modern world .
a history of vanished landscapes, enhanced by the histories of people who bring them to light The
title refers to the physiographic province of the United States that reaches from eastern Utah to
eastern California, a silent world of austere beauty, of hundreds of discrete high mountain ranges
that are green with junipers and often white with snow The terrain becomes the setting for
a lyrical evocation of the science of geology, with important digressions into the plate-tectonics
revolution and the history of the geologic time scale

2 In Suspect Terrain
From the outwash plains of Brooklyn to Indiana.s drifted diamonds and gold, In Suspect Terrain is
a narrative of the earth, told in four sections of equal length, each in a different way reflecting
the three others.a biography; a set piece about a fragment of Appalachian landscape in illuminating
counterpoint to the human history there; a modern collision of ideas about the origins of the mountain
range; and, in contrast, a century-old collision of ideas about the existence of the Ice Age The
central figure is Anita Harris, an internationally celebrated geologist who went into her profession
to get out of a Brooklyn ghetto The unifying theme is plate tectonics.here concentrating on the
acceptance that all aspects of the theory do not universally enjoy As such, In Suspect Terrain is
a report from the rough spots at the front edge of a science

3 Rising From The Plains
Rising from the Plains is John McPhee.s third book on geology and geologists Following Basin and
Range and In Suspect Terrain, it continues to present a cross section of North America along the
fortieth parallel.a series gathering under the overall title Annals of the Former World

4 Assembling California
At various times in a span of fifteen years, John McPhee made geological field surveys in the company
of Eldridge Moores, a tectonicist at the University of California at Davis The result of these trips
is Assembling California, a cross-section in human and geologic time, from Donner Pass in the Sierra
Nevada through the golden foothills of the Mother Lode and across the Great Central Valley to the wine
country of the Coast Ranges, the rock of San Francisco, and the San Andreas family of faults The two
disparate time scales occasionally intersect.in the gold disruptions of the nineteenth century no less
than in the earthquakes of the twentieth.and always with relevance to a newly understood geologic
history in which half a dozen large and separate pieces of country are seen to have drifted in from
far and near to coalesce as California McPhee and Moores also journeyed to remote mountains of
Arizona and to Cyprus and northern Greece, where rock of the deep-ocean floor has been transported
into continental settings, as it has in California Global in scope and a delight to read, Assembling
California is a sweeping narrative of maps in motion, of evolving and dissolving lands

5 Crossing the Craton
The final installment in the series

Download File Size:440.32 MB

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