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Geological Sciences
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Recommendations
*** = highest recommendation.
** = book with strong merit.
* = book of merit
Some book covers seen by using search at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/
Click on covers for extended reviews
Geological Sciences: Focus
Alder, K.
The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error that
Transformed the World. Free Press, 2002.
Struggle of two men striving to determine the length of a meter and the error that made ethics an issue!
Allen, J. E., M. Burns, S. C. Sargent, and S. Sargent.
Cataclysm on The Columbia. Timber Press, 1979. **
A massive catastrophe in the Pacific Northwest and one man’s battle with the establishment to have the unmistakable evidence accepted.
Alley, R. B.
The Two-Mile Time Machine. Princeton University Press, 2002.
Ice cores, their revelations, and what the past divulges. A story about climatic vulnerability and possibility of future events.
Alt, D. and D.
Hyndman. Northwest
Exposures: A Geologic Story of the Northwest.
Mountain Press, 1995.
A look at the complex geological forces that helped shape Puget Sound area of the Pacific Northwest.
Bruce, V.
No Apparent Danger – The True Story of Volcanic Disaster at Galeras
and Nevado del Ruiz,
Columbia.
Perrenial, 2002. +
Controversial look at two events, the bureaucracies, policies and personalities that culminated in the deaths of over 23,000 people in Columbia. The stories of the Nevado del Ruiz and Galeras eruptions are recounted by geologist and science writer, Victoria Bruce.
Cadbury, D.
Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of Scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of the
Prehistoric World.
HarperCollins Publishers, 2000.
A depiction of ego and error as two adversaries race to make scientific history. Their zeal will culminate in the destruction of the sites and fossil records they intended to portray, preserve by their research and the painful process of reinterpretation of their findings.
Lovelock, J.,
Gaia, A New Look at Life on Earth. Oxford University Press, 2000.
GAIA eloquently discusses the Earth and our understanding of it’s processes in a new and controversial light: Earth as a very large, living system with self-sustaining and self-regulating attributes.
Keay,
J. The Great Arc. The Dramatic Tale of How
India Was Mapped and
Everest Was Named.
Perrenial,
2001. ***
Huge is an apt description of this adventure! Maps and illustrations punctuate this larger than life story of personalities, equipment and their accomplishment - the mapping of India from tip to top.
McPhee, J. Coming Into The Country. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991
This is the story of Alaska and the Alaskans in areas from the urban to the remote bush.
McPhee, J.
Annals of the Former World. Farrar Straus Giroux, 2000.
Traveling along Interstate 80 for twenty years, John McPhee’s geological travelogue takes us along, to discover America through the educated vision and voices of Geologists met along the way.
AWARD: Pulitzer Prize. 1999.
McPhee, J.
Rising from the Plains. Noonday Press, 1991.
From the plains near Nebraska to the Tetons in the west, Wyoming is a geological and historical setting like no other. Love and McPhee through this unique land punctuated with geological and palentology treasures to be discovered just beneath the surface.
McPhee, J.
Assembling
California. Noonday
Press, 1994.
Tectonicist Moores and John McPhee traverse the geological forces that offset, transverse, uplift and adhere to the continent to give us the marvel known as California!
Stegner, Wallace. Beyond the Hundredth
Meridian.
Penguin
USA, 1992. ***
Water, John Wesley Powell and the American West are forever linked in history and legend. A larger than life man, a larger than life region, and a limited water supply combine to make a story that is both thought provoking and engagingly entertaining.
Winchester, S.
The Map That Changed the World. William Smith and the Birth of Modern
Geology. Perrenial, 2002. **
Heroes and villains grace the fields, hills, halls of science during the lifetime of William Smith. From his days as a canal surveyor, to incarceration in debtors prison, to an esteemed professor at Oxford, the first geological cartographer’s story is as dramatic as it is exciting.
Winchester, S.,: Krakatoa. The Day The World Exploded August 27, 1888. Harper Collins. 2003
Geology Applied:
Epstein, E. J. Rise and Fall of Diamonds. The Shattering of a Brilliant Illusion. Simon & Schuster, 1982. *
Revealing look at the diamond industry and their quest to ensure their motto, “A Diamond Is Forever” remains in tack and firmly linked to our basic emotions and love.
Tyiel, J., The Great Los Angeles Swindle. Oil, Stocks, and Scandal During the Roaring Twenties. University of California Press, 1994.
Yergin, D.
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power.
Free Press, 1993. **
Greed, war, power, wealth, human struggles and politics have always surrounded crude. The Prize offers a glimpse into the history of the commodity that still impacts life across the globe.
AWARD: Pulitzer Prize. 1992.
Geology: Adventure
Ambrose, S. E., Undaunted Courage. Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West. Simon and Schuster, 1996. **
Ambrose, S. E., Nothing Like It In The World. The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869. Simon and Schuster, 2000. **
Berton, P. The
Last Spike - The Great Railway 1881-1885. Doubleday, 2002. **
Varieties of terrain plague a countries quest for territory and resources. How the building of a railway opened the vast expanses of the Canadian Rockies and promoted an awareness of the geology of western Canada.
King, C., Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada. 1982.
Geology: Water
Barry, J.M. Rising Tide. The Great
Mississippi Flood of 1927
and How It Changed America.
Simon &
Schuster, 1998. ***
Men who know a river and those who ‘only think they dointroduce us to the world of the 1920s, a culture of the South, and the River that remains a force to be reckoned with. Intention vs. actions and ethics vs. pragmatism engross the lives of rich and poor as months of rain mercilessly fall and swell the Mississippi.
Gumprecht, B., The Los Angeles River. Its Life, Death, and Possible
Rebirth. Johns Hopkins University, 1999**
Har, J. A
Civil Action. Vintage Books, 1996.
A high incidence of children dying from leukemia in Woburn Massachusetts leads to a search for the source and a battle between parents and the corporations responsible.
AWARD: National Book Critics Circle Awards, 1995.
McPhee, J.
Encounters With the Archdruid. Noonday Press, 1990.
Discourses of a mineral engineer, resort developer, dam builder, and militant conservationist as they encounter one another in three different wilderness areas.
Reisner, M.
Cadillac Desert. The
American West and Its Disappearing Water .
Penguin Press., 1993. ***
Water in the West. An unbiased look at the men, bureaucracies, and policies that have shaped the west and the problems we face because of the decisions and choices made.
.
Twain, Mark, Life on the Mississippi. 1883**