Customer Reviews

Principles of Geology, Volume 1

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm a professional engineering geologist in California. I graduated with my BS in 1990. I was taught "modern" geology, based on the acceptance of Plate Tectonics among other things. My best friend is also a professional engineering geologist, but he graduated in 1976. He laughs when he describes having to write papers pretending to still accept "Isostacy" just to keep his "old school" professors from failing him. They would have none of that "Continental Drift" rubbish. This is how I became interested in learning about the science of geology BEFORE Plate Tectonics or Continental Drift. Lyell's "Principles of Geology, Volume 1" is one of a few references I'm collecting to learn more about this "old school" geology. Pirsson's "A Text-Book of Geology, Part 1-Physical Geology" (1915) is another landmark reference; Hutton's "Theory Of The Earth" (1788) is another. Lyell's (1830) bridges the gap between those other two. So about this book: As the description generically says, the pages of this book are black and white scans of the pages of Lyell's original book. The description sort of describes the apparent case that this version of Lyell's book is actually a compilation of pages from a few different copies of Lyell's original. They apparently took the best pages/scans from all the originals they used and put them together in this book in an effort to make as complete a reproduction as possible. Everything is in order, and I've only found one missing page so far. Some pages look near perfect, others are a scan of what must have been a torn, stained mess in the original. Most are of good quality. For those of you who are as nit-picky as I am, it looks like they had the contrast turned way up on the scanner or printer; everything is either black or white, not grayscale. I think they scanned it in text mode, not photo mode. And it looks like there's a bit of a margin around each scanned page. Basically it's readable, and it looks like a black and white scan of the original. It's not beautiful; it's nice. Short of spending thousands of dollars trying to talk some national library out of their original copy, this is the best you'll find. I like it; it's very interesting. If you're interested in Lyell's book enough to read this review, you'll probably like this book. The price is certainly right. Cheers!