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Assembling California - John McPhee
Assembling California
by: (author)
3.00 10
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... show more
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.
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Format: paperback
ISBN: 9780374523930 (0374523932)
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pages no: 294
Edition language: English
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Community Reviews
Ms. Margie
Ms. Margie rated it
I'm going to repost here my review of [b:Basin and Range|19894|Basin and Range|John McPhee|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1311988469s/19894.jpg|1665814] because it's pretty much exactly the same for this book. I liked this one a bit more because so much of was about the Bay Area, but I'm guessing it ...
so many books, so little time
so many books, so little time rated it
4.0 Assembling California
Fascinating account of both California's slow geologic creation and what's been learned from plate tectonics. My science and memory challenged brain had to reread some passages, but this is very enjoyable.
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