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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Though few of the leaf peepers driving through the Smokies this fall will know it, the Appalachians used to extend all the way to Scotland. In this sprawling geological survey, British paleontologist Fortey (Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution) tells readers that millions of years ago, before the land masses broke apart, the Caledonide Mountains formed the northernmost end of an enormous mountain range. Starting in the shadow of Vesuvius, Fortey's global tour moves to the Hawaiian islands, which, he explains, are falling back into the sea from northwest to southeast. Readers trek with him through the Alps and learn how rock folds and stretches. Fortey doesn't restrict himself to current geological time: he says the continents have broken apart and reformed more than once and will likely crunch together again in a few million years; the Pacific Ocean is gradually closing up because the lighter-weight continents are slowly drifting over the underlying basalt. Some readers may wish for more discussion of desert areas, though there is a beautiful account of a descent through Earth's history via burro into the Grand Canyon. Fortey's writing is wonderfully descriptive, but once in a while one wishes he'd kept to his main path and not wandered off into tangential topics. Geology and earth sciences buffs will eat this up. 32 pages of color illus. not seen by PW; 58 b&w illus.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Scientific American

"Geology underlies everything: it founds the landscape, dictates the agriculture, determines the character of villages." Fortey, senior paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, set out to explore those connections. "My solution has been to visit particular places, to explore their natural and human history in an intimate way, thence to move to the deeper motor of the earth--to show how the lie of the land responds to a deeper beat, a slow and fundamental pulse." His stops as he takes the reader on a journey around the world include Mount Vesuvius, the Alps, Newfoundland, Los Angeles and the Deccan Traps in India. He is an eloquent guide

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59 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All Around the World, All Under the World, All Inside ..., November 3, 2004

By	R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Earth: An Intimate History (Hardcover)

"This is where things get really interesting." This sentiment, from a chapter on the Alps in _Earth: An Intimate History_ (Knopf) by Richard Fortey, describes how geological layers, normally oldest at the bottom and newest at the top, can get flipped by one mass of rock being thrust upon another. It might just as well apply to hundreds of ideas in these pages. The book is a fascinating summary of where geology stands now, as a relatively new science which has been completely remade on the foundation of plate tectonics, just as biology has only recently been founded on evolution. "It is not faith that moves mountains; it is tectonics," Fortey insists. He does not directly confront those who would misuse science to "prove" an Earth less than 10,000 years old; the real science from real geologists, of course, overwhelmingly indicates an age of billions, not thousands, of years. But he understands the impulse: "Let the time go into the millions, and beyond, and the insignificance of our own sector becomes patent." Somehow, this is an insignificant insignificance. Billions of years of continental plates shoving each other around on our planet did eventually bring forth a creature that could understand that process. The history of how that understanding came about, as told here, is a proud one, full of human errors and pride, but powered by that admirable human trait of curiosity. "Rocks do not lie," Fortey tells us. "They do, however, dissemble as to their true meaning." Demonstrating the meaning, and clearing away the dissembling, is what this book expertly accomplishes.

One of the sacred locales of the science of geology mentioned here is the Temple of Serapis near Naples. It now consists of three huge columns, each composed of one single piece of marble. They are discolored about four meters above their pedestals, and the discoloring comes from the boring of a destructive type of mollusk. This means that the temple (actually a marketplace) was constructed and then was somehow lowered into the sea, whence it arose again. It was Charles Lyell who realized that the columns could be read to understand the movement of the Earth and that rocks reflected changes by fire, water, ice, and animals. Lyell's _Principles of Geology_ changed the way people thought of the age of the Earth and how the lands were formed, and it profoundly influenced the ideas of the young Charles Darwin. Fortey takes us to the temple, up Vesuvius, along the San Andreas Fault, to the Grand Canyon, and more, at each point showing the stones and layers and describing how they got there. He includes fascinating details, like the work of researchers who are, in a minuscule way, reproducing the enormous heat and pressure of the inner Earth to examine the extraordinary physics and chemistry there. He tells of the streets of Kalgoorlie, Australia, which were literally paved with gold; the miners who dug up the shiny yellow metal didn't realize that the waste rock they brought up contained gold compounded with tellurium. When they did realize it, there was a second gold rush. He mentions a bar at Paddington Station, where the counter is made of a slab of granite from the Precambrian times. Always a genial guide, with a humorous, curious, and philosophical outlook on the large mass of material he presents here, Fortey reflects that anyone who has missed a train can at least reflect at the bar "...that is 1,500 million years old and reflect that half an hour is not a serious delay."

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37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rockin' round the world, August 3, 2004

By	Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Earth: An Intimate History (Hardcover)

Studying geology can be fun. Trips across the world, meeting new people, sharing insights and resolving mysteries of Earth's processes. There is, of course, the downside. Lava flows that shred boots, impossibly complex rock formations and bays that simply disappear during a seven-year interval between visits. If you have a writing gift, as Richard Fortey does, you can impart all these aspects of the science to a wide audience. This book does that admirably - and Fortey's not even a geologist!

Fortey's study of fossil trilobites has led him far afield. Since those bizarre creatures persisted for over three hundred million years, their remains are well distributed in both time and space. In studying them, Fortey has made the entire planet his backyard. That intimacy and his wide vision combine to produce this matchless work. From the opening pages he combines human history and the Earth's antics in an evocative theme. Vesuvius, that town killer, becomes a symbol of the dynamics of the world beneath our feet. Volcanoes also produce rich soils, luring humans up their slopes to plant crops. That juxtaposition typifies how geology has driven human society.

Geology, Fortey reminds us, is a young science, as active as the world it studies. He traces the thoughts of investigators over the past centuries. Through that time, two aspects of the Earth's dynamics eluded them. How fast was the planet cooling and what caused the bizarre formations they studied? It took physics, not geology, to solve the first - radioactive elements kept the interior hot. The second, plate tectonics, resolved most of the second. The notion that the crust "floats" on a sea of magma led to better understanding of deep processes. Plate tectonics, in Fortey's view, is the key to unlock nearly all geology's basic question. It explains "suspect terrain" and anomalous mountain formation. It also demonstrates why some areas are earthquake and volcano prone. Charles Lyell's "uniformitarianism", Fortey stresses, is basically correct. We can't observe directly many of the forces shaping the world.

What shapes the world, Fortey, continues, shapes our lives as well. How much of our history is due to Africa's pushing northward into Europe? What forced the ancient peoples of the Western Hemisphere to create their unique societies? Is the landscape of Southern Asia a foundation for the famous Silk Road? Tilting landscapes give us our rivers and the communities established on their banks. How many times has the Mississippi drowned towns, or abandoned them to isolation? Fortey keeps us aware of how our existence is shaped by the rocks beneath us.

With sets of stunning colour photographs and drawings to enhance the finely crafted text, this book's worthy of your attention. Fortey is always a compelling read, and this book stands among his best. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Does the Earth move for you?, March 23, 2006

By	Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Earth: An Intimate History (Paperback)

In answer to a time-related statement from another, such as "I turn 57 next month", have you ever answered, "Rocks don't live that long"? In EARTH, British paleontologist-author Richard Fortey reminds the reader that the globe is theorized to be 4.5 billion years young, and the oldest rock datable by current technology, a zircon crystal from Australia, registers at 4.4 billion years. Is your mother-in-law that old?

I've always been fascinated, when flying over or driving through the deserts of the western U.S., by the myriad of different rock formations unclothed by vegetation and naked for all to see. I've wished that I had a geologist by my side to explain how they came to be. Fortey may be the next best thing. In EARTH, the theme is "plate tectonics", and it's a tribute to the author's writing talent that he can make so esoteric a subject supremely interesting. The book is, at times, hard to put down.

To illustrate the observable effects of past movements of the Earth's crust - movement that will continue long past the habitation of the Earth by the human species, Fortey has selected several spots on our world as exhibits: Pompei, Hawaii, the Swiss Alps, Newfoundland, Scotland, India, Kenya, California, and the Grand Canyon. The narrative is, of course, about the evolution of tectonic plate theory, but also about proto-continents, lost oceans, volcanoes, mountain ranges, upthrusts, downthrusts, subduction zones, deep ocean trenches, mid-ocean ranges, lava, basalt, granite, gneisses, fossils, fault lines, schists, nappes, magnetic fields, limestone, ice sheets, diamonds, gold, coral reefs, green sand, "hot spots", tin mines, magma, marble, polar wandering, rubies, tors, and a mule named "Buttercup". Fortey's gift is to make the mix wonderfully engaging for the average reader, though strict adherents to Creationism will likely see their beliefs threatened. Did you know, for example, that the Appalachians were once one end of a mountain chain that stretched across an ancient continent, and the remains of which, after continental drift, are now in such widely separated locales as Newfoundland, Ireland, Wales, Scotland and the length of western Scandinavia? Or that mid-European miners have long recognized the panicked streaming of cockroaches, which are extremely sensitive to changes in rock pressure, as the harbinger of impending rockfalls?

The author occasionally waxes philosophic. After noting that a 1.5 billion-year old granite slab serves as the counter of a bar in London's Paddington Station, he muses:

"If you have just missed your train, you can at least lean on a bar that is 1500 million years old and reflect that perhaps half an hour is not that serious a delay."

I did, however, spot one egregious error in the narrative that is otherwise erudite and above reproach. On page 278, while recalling a trip through Nevada, he writes:

"Carson City used to be the state capital. Now it is an endearingly ramshackle collection of wooden houses scattered over the hillside."

Now, 'ang on a minute, guv. Carson City has been - and remains - the Nevada state capital. Moreover, it's situated in a broad valley at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, not spread over hills. Perhaps Fortey was thinking of Virginia City, made famous in the TV series "Bonanza", which is located a few miles away, is ramshackle, and is spread over hillsides. But Virginia City was never the state capital.

Perhaps the most endearing chapter is the one in which Richard describes his ride on the back of a mule from the Grand Canyon's South Rim all the way to the bottom while, of course, gawking at the various strata of rock on the way down. Buttercup comes across as the stolid hero of the adventure.

The EARTH paperback includes four sections of color photographs, plus other B&W snaps, maps, and drawings scattered throughout the text. It's a very user-friendly volume like Fortey's other book that I've read, LIFE. This book is an eminently readable work of popular science that should be required reading in high school geology. And I now have a deeper appreciation for the waivey-grained, black, white and grey boulders of granite - up to three tons in weight - that line our koi pond.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Description of the Earth's Internals, Not For The Novice
This book is good overview of the various processes that make up the geology of our planet. The author has chosen several locations on the earth which demonstrate the various... Read more

Published 9 months ago by Andrew Wyllie

4.0 out of 5 stars A Guidebook to Our Floating World
As someone long interested in Geology, I found Prof Fortey's admixture of travel writing, geological history and scientific explanation most entertaining and thought-provoking... Read more

Published 15 months ago by James Oglethorpe

5.0 out of 5 stars A retired geologist's comments
As you would expect, I didn't learn much new from Fortey's book, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, as he di9d a great job of clarifying the major issues in Earth history.

Published 20 months ago by Robert T. Simmonds

5.0 out of 5 stars Marie Curie belongs in this book
This is an excellent work, and I give it five stars

But I need to address one reviewer who gave it one star and wrote: "For example, a color plate of Marie Curie... Read more

Published on September 26, 2007 by Min Sun Yee

1.0 out of 5 stars garrulous bore
A good number of anecdotes and photographs are unrelated entirely to the object of the book. For example, a color plate of Marie Curie looking at a test tube - connection please... Read more

Published on August 28, 2007 by Brews

4.0 out of 5 stars Good reading
The book provides a very readable overview of the eath's evolution. I stress overview since it is not intended to be a petrological or mineralogical treatise, but rather a view... Read more

Published on August 22, 2007 by Robert F. Ritchie

4.0 out of 5 stars What a GREAT Planet!
I get very tired of Textbooks compiled by 'committee', so every year I search for a "Good READ" from an excellent author which covers the topic well. Read more

Published on January 4, 2007 by S. L. Blanton

3.0 out of 5 stars Really a personal diary
I got this book expecting that it would be about the development of Geology, or the development of the Earth. Read more

Published on June 20, 2006 by A. G Primack

3.0 out of 5 stars Worldwide Adventures in Getting to the Point
Here's one of those books where an expert makes an interesting topic boring with diffuse prose and pedantic meandering. Read more

Published on June 2, 2006 by doomsdayer520

4.0 out of 5 stars A Survey of Planet Earth's History for the Layman
Richard Fortney's "Earth" is a survey, in mostly layman's terms, of the geological history of the Earth and how it relates to humankind. Read more

Published on May 14, 2006 by D. S. Thurlow

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