Customer Reviews

Geology of U.S. Parklands

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I teach a course in geology of America's National Parklands at a community college. I have tried another book for the required text for the course, with mixed success. Therefore when I found out that Geology of U.S. Parklands, fifth edition, was being released, I ordered it for the course even before I had seen my review copy. Previously when traveling I have consulted The Geologic Story of the National Parks and Monuments by the same authors, and was sufficiently impressed with the content, clarity of writing, and extent of coverage that I eagerly ordered the revised version. In my opinion this new book is THE one to use for similar college courses, and should also serve well for travelers with or without geologic training who want to know more about the geology of the magnificent federal parklands of our nation. There is a sufficient short course on general geologic principles in the initial chapter. I like the clarity, accuracy and dry humor of the text, which is better than the style and content in the book previously used - Geology of America's National Park Areas by Brooks Ellwood. Although the latter is quite a bit less expensive and has better quality if not more useful pictures, it is often too simplistic for my use in this course. I may have more to say after having used Kiver and Harris book as a text for a quarter or two, but my initial reaction to it is very favorable. Other books cover the geology of one or a few park areas, but this book has the entire country including Hawaii. However, for some reason the parklands of Alaska are excluded, probably because their inclusion could add many pages to what is already a massive volume (902 pages). I should have liked to see higher quality photographs and a lower cost, but other than those minor quibbles, this book will very likely set the standard to which all others on the subject will strive.

This is such a huge book and has some great information in it but the book has only black and white photos and they are very small. For the price I expected colored photos and large enough to see what they were showing.