Customer Reviews

Basin and Range

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4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

John McPhee's Basin and Range is a layman's geology explaining the formation of mountains and valleys between the Great Salt Lake and the Sierra Nevadas. McPhee intersperses his geology with an alluring mix of personal insight and travelogue commentary which enlivens an otherwise potentially dry subject matter. McPhee makes geology approachable and uncovers the deep intrigue of a science which can be punishing when presented in textbook style. Basin and Range is a short, interesting, and enjoyable explanation of the earth's early shifts of magnitude.

Reading John McPhee is such a delight that one wonders what he would be like as a teacher. Not a journalism instructor, for which he is amply qualified, but declaiming on science, particularly geology. McPhee is a master in understandably describing geologic processes and the people studying them. Under his touch, the stable earth is brought to life, compressing time and traversing space. Watching an aircraft descend for a landing, he muses that in another time its approach path would be deep under water. He explains how different the perception of time is in the mind of a geologist from that of our own. All civilization is but an eyeblink in contrast with the rise and fall of mountains and seas. According to McPhee, what geologists face is summarized in one sentence: "The summit of Mount Everest
is marine limestone."

Not long ago, he reminds us, the world was once considered to be like a drying apple. Some areas shrink driving other places to rise leaving a skin of folds. McPhee describes the history of the idea of plate tectonics and how it confounded this earlier concept. The starting point was an understanding of the earth's age. A Scottish "gentleman," James Hutton was an astute observer and an eloquent speaker. Putting his findings in writing, however, "trampled people with words." Hutton revealed the vast duration of time required to form earth's vistas. He was followed by a herald of Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell. Between them, the age of the earth and of life replaced the established biblical origins. In effect, Hutton had taken the next major step in science after Copernicus. Plate tectonics, a group, rather than an individual's insight, opened new fields of research and provided more detailed views of Earth's processes.
Among the pictures are better indicators of finding valuable resources.

McPhee's other works provide testimony to his physical courage, which is immense. Join him as he drives a twisting mountain road with a geologist on a quest: "We turned a last corner, with our inner wheels resting firmly on the road and the two others supported by Deffeyes' expectations." McPhee has joined Kenneth Deffeyes to learn about the building of the Basin and Range - the succession of mountain strings and the valleys separating them. Through McPhee, Deffeyes relates how the mountains were thrust up, eroding silt into the lowlands. Mountain building forces also produce other interesting results. Deffeyes, "a big man with a tenured waistline" by McPhee's description, has "pure and noble purposes in coming to Nevada." His quest for "pure science" investigation is one side of Deffeyes' character. The
other side is his pursuit of a "noble" metal - silver. Deffeyes knows of how plate tectonics works. He also grasps the history of the Nevada mining industry. The combination may make him a millionaire from refining abandoned mines. But there are risks and he tells McPhee " . . . if anybody comes after me, I want you to go to jail cheerfully rather than surrender your notes." Fortunately, McPhee is still outside prison walls writing for us.

This first of several works on the revolution in thinking inspired by plate tectonics remains a readable and valuable book. McPhee doesn't confine his talents to imparting what scientists do. Arcane topics are deftly woven with our everyday lives and ambitions. Sit beside him in a cafe in Nevada as he queries patrons on their reaction to the possibility that the sea will someday flood their region: "We got a boat." His careful balance of deep science and everyday life has received many accolades, but never quite enough. The best reward is to buy him and read him - and the benefits to the reader will be the more enduring.

John McPhee's Basin and Range kept me wanting to read more, right up to the very end. His style was very interesting, keeping his story on basin and range full of knowledge. He describes two of North America's past basin and range provinces. An ancient one which was once along America's eastern seaboard and the active basin and range which is centered in Nevada. Even for those who are not knowlegdable on geology this is an easily understood book. I would recommend this book to anyone that enjoys to read, especially someone that is interested in learning about our natural environment.

As a student of geology, I enthusiastically gulped down this book- it gives a great overview of not only the Basin and Range history but touches on the geologic history of the entire continent. My only complaint about this and McPhee's similar works is his tendancy to rhapsodize on geologic terms in a very wordy fashion. Those interested in the science rather than McPhee's preoccupation with the geologic language may be tempted to skip pages at a time. However this is a fantastic book for information and digestible by aspiring geologists at all levels of proficiency.

Geologic insight and humorous tangents abound in John McPhee's Basin and Range. In this book, McPhee describes to a more or less lay audience the formation processes of the Basin and Range. This book was written as part of a series of geology along Interstate-80. In this initial volume, McPhee lays the groundwork for the complicated processes that created the Basin and Range as well as giving readers a sort of compressed introduction to plate tectonics, geologic time and terminology.

He begins the book in New Jersey, three thousand miles from what readers know as the Basin and Range province. Though his motive is not entirely clear, one may be able to detect that McPhee is showing a possible evolutionary movement for the Basin and Range where the processes occurring in the province today may lead to a morphology similar to present-day New Jersey. Rather than straightforwardly addressing the Basin and Range (as a textbook may do), McPhee opts to intersperse his discussion of the landscape with discussions of nomenclature to geologic time to the unreliability of a geologist as a driver. When the author does directly confront the Basin and Range it is nothing overwhelming-some block faulting here, dry lakebeds there-in an attempt to make the geology sound simplistic when that could hardly be farther from true.

While the book has definite merit as a primer on geologic formation processes of the Basin and Range, the reader is forced to compete with McPhee's flowery stream-of-conscience writing style. A reader with no geologic background may be able to glean some information from this book. That which is gained, however, will be more subtle and anecdotal than anything else. While McPhee's simplification of the processes that formed the Basin and Range may be helpful at an amateur level, it may as well be frustrating and cannot compete with the knowledge one would gain from reading a more formal publication.

The parralells the author draws between the eastern seaboard during the breakup of North America from Europe to the Great Basin and what is going on there was fascinating to me. McPhee helps you understand the processes geologists go through in a way that is interesting to the lay person.

The projective nature of lookin at what the continent will look like millions of years down the road was also fascinating, with a major rift zone either along the Sierra Nevada or the Wasatch front, it certainly made the mountains and valleys come to life in my native state.

Between "Basin and Range" and two books about the Geology of Utah by Hintze and Stokes, Utahns are blessed with an abundance of interesting geology books that will help the novice along and make a simple drive in the country a fascinating tour of what was and what will be.

No one can touch John McPhee when it comes to giving a subject, any subject, a thoroughly fascinating and fascinatingly thorough investigation. Even if you've never been interested in geology, much less the geology of a very small part of the world, just west of the Sierra Nevada and Lake Tahoe, you'll enjoy McPhee's writing and will likely be buying plane tickets to Reno to put your newfound enhusiasm to work "on site". Obviously, I like McPhee a lot. After reading his "Coming Into the Country", I did indeed buy tickets to Alaska

Mcfee has an amazing ability to help the non geologist understand and enjoy this complicated topic. His writing skills keep one interested and absorbed. Try "Assembling California"and Irons in the Fire",too.

The idea of examining American geology a slice at a time by following I-80 from east to west was brilliant.

In this particular volume, McPhee deals with the Great Basin portion of that travelogue geology. There's a lot more than meets the eye -- especially the untrained eye not native to the Great Basin -- in the mountains and valleys of the Silver State, McFhee shows.

Discover or rediscover the excitement of geology with John McPhee as he travels the west with geologist Kenneth S. Deffeyes. As they explore the geological past in the American present you never know what will happen or where they will take you. They may get rich at an old silver mine, discover a past or future ocean, or touch an angular unconformity. To some extent they do all of this and to give a history of geology at the same time. The author effectively conveys the violence, drama, and epic immediacy of geological study. I look forward to future geological travels through his books.