Customer Reviews

Field Geology Illustrated

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4 star:		(2)
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I wanted a book that would show me actual field situations of common geologic phenomenon. Being a novice, I needed something that I could easily carry and that would not undermine detail. Maley's excellent book fills the bill very well. The numerous illustrations and photographs in this book are extremely useful if you want to "see" and understand geology. Many of the pictures have inset scale standards, such as quarters and measuring rulers, that give one a good comparasion of the rocks and sediments involved. I also appreciate the black and white pictures. Often geology texts go in for snazzy color pictures that often blurr important detail. If you want a good field guide that you can actually use this book is for you.

Field Geology Illustrated is an excellent, concise introductory guide to recognizing geological features in the field. Its explanations and descriptions of structural geology are especially informative. The photographs and figures are outstanding and clearly display fascinating geological phenomena. Perfect for novice and advanced students.

I have both editions and this edition is a remarkable improvement. However, the author who has vast experience in marine geology, decided to take up precious space in an early chapter on this topic since, according to him, we live on a planet covered by water. I think instead 15-20 pages introducing geologic maps and elementary structure(especially after his introductory chapter on the history of US geological surveying) would serve the reader far better--who probably will have little opportunity to particpate in 'field' marine geology.

Maley lists standard field geology books in the reference section (Compton, etc), but field geology for the beginner/student involves understanding field maps, not just photos, as good as these pics are. A few pages covering geologic maps makes sense for a field geology book with over 700 pages.

How I wish I had found this book earlier! The best geology book I've ever bought. It gives illustrations of just about everything along with some descriptions of what you are looking at. It's almost like an illustrated geology dictionary/glossary, and gives many pictures both as drawings and photos to help the reader understand what they are seeing. It is a great asset for all geology classes. If you are someone studying geology this is a must have book!!

This is just a great field manual. It's packed with useful information and the illustrations are plentiful and really add to the reader's understanding since they are usually fully explained in great detail. Using photos and geological examples mostly from the Pacific Northwest, the photos dramatically illustrate many of the most important concepts. The text is also very well written, and the whole manual is detailed and thorough. Overall an extremely well done, practical, and detailed treatment of the subject. And not the least of its virtues is that it's printed on high quality, glossy paper. And finally, at only 35 bucks the price is quite reasonable for what you're getting.

I've been interested in geology most of my life, since I started picking invertebrate Devonian fossils out of stream beds in 1942. So I have quite a stack of books on geology; but most of them are not worth having.

Geology is the process of inferring the history of our planet from the physical record of earlier times. Unfortunately, most of the physical record is missing, and much of what remains is quite puzzling. Most geology texts are either extremely restricted in what they cover, or are texts for "bird courses" in geology taken by kids who must take one science course to get a degree (texts that tell "the story of the earth's history" without explaining how we know), or are monographs impenetrable except to other geologists.

But although I am not a geologist, almost all my life I have wanted to be able to see what I'm looking at, whether in a road cut or in a flood plain or in a mountain range or in a "wild" cave. And it's really hard to find educational materials that help me to see. This book does that; it is one of three that I treasure. (The other two are "Principles of Geology" Third Edition, by James Gilluly, Aaron C. Waters and A. O. Woodford, and "Geology Illustrated" by John S. Shelton.) I have several other books that help, but these are the three that I depend on to help me decipher how a small deposit of slate wound up embedded into a terrane of folded and metamorphosed PreCambrian Gneiss, or how the purple-red puddingstone at the crest of Schunemunck Mountain came to have three precisely orthogonal cleavage planes, that cleave right through quartz pebbles as well as through the sandstone matrix. I don't haul texts around with me; when I encounter something I don't understand I take a sample or two, and maybe a few photos, and bring those home to ponder at leisure, books by my side.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book. But be sure you get the 2005 edition, not the 1994 or 1980 editions.

"Field Geology Illustrated-2nd Ed." is a useful text for the recognition of geologic structures and processes in the field. The illustrations combined with the black and white photographs are well complemented by the text. The book is geared toward examples from western North America, especially the latter chapters on Groundwater, Mineral Deposits, and Public Lands-Records and Surveys. The 20 page glossary in the back is fairly comprehensive, and all in all, a very accessible text.