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Reading the Rocks

The Autobiography of the Earth

Reading the Rocks Open the full-size image

Contributors

By Marcia Bjornerud

Formats and Prices

On Sale
Oct 31, 2006
Page Count
256 pages
Publisher
Basic Books
ISBN-13
9780465006847

Price

$18.99

Price

$24.99 CAD

Format

Format:

  1. Trade Paperback $18.99 $24.99 CAD
  2. Audiobook Download (Unabridged) $24.99

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From the author of Turning to Stone, a mediation on the stories that rock can tell us about the deep history of our planet

To many of us, the Earth’s crust is a relic of ancient, unknowable history. But to a geologist, the Earth’s crust, and every stone upon it, is a richly illustrated narrative, telling gothic tales of cataclysm and reincarnation. How can we learn to see them? 

In Reading the Rocks, geologist Marcia Bjornerud shows us. Taking the reader on an eye-opening tour of Deep Time, Bjornerud explains in elegant prose what we see and feel beneath our feet. Both scientist and storyteller, she reminds us that our home is a living thing with lessons to teach. She shows how our planet has long maintained a delicate balance between creation and destruction, and how the global give-and-take has sustained life on Earth in the face of great upheaval.  

Today, however, with the rapidly escalating effects of human beings on their home planet, that great balance is being threatened — and the consequences may be catastrophic. Reading the Rocks calls all friends of the Earth to work to avoid it. 

Genre:

  • "[A]n admirably lucid account of the Earth’s history as told via its geological record."
    The New Yorker
  • "We certainly need popular science books like Reading the Rocks to help science fight back... Bjornerud has a rare talent for explaining scientific ideas clearly with intriguing and helpful analogies, similes, and metaphors."
    Nature Magazine
  • "No one escapes the evidence of our Earth's history: arcane, violent, and relevant to all daily concerns. The language of the planet, superbly translated by Bjornerud, illuminates our common past and uncertain future. The four-billion-year-long animated conversation between rocks, water, and life continues." 
    Lynn Margulis, author of Symbiotic Planet
  • "The perfect field guide for a geologic field trip through the Earth's history."
    Jill S. Schneiderman, editor of Liberation Science
  • "A truly exciting book."
    Robert H. Dott, Jr., co-author of Evolution of the Earth
  • "Marcia Bjornerud knows her rocks, in all their interconnected glory to the entire biosphere, and she tells their stories with depth, clarity, and passion."
    Tyler Volk, author of Quarks to Culture

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Marcia Bjornerud

About the Author

Marcia Bjornerud is a Professor and Chair of Geology at Lawrence University. She is a Fellow of the Geographical Society of America, and was a 2000-2001 Fulbright Scholar. This is her first book. She lives in Appleton, Wisconsin.

Learn more about this author