From Library Journal
McPhee is the most celebrated contemporary writer on North American geology, and Annals is his magnum opus, combining edited and revised sections from previous works with two new essays.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Scientific American
"It's a real schlemazel," geologist Anita Harris said to McPhee as they examined geologic formations at a road cut along Interstate 80 near the Delaware Water Gap. "Not by accident is geology called geology. It's named for Gaea, the daughter of Chaos." The rocks are often chaotic, but the study of them is not in McPhee's pellucid presentation. His meaty book, adorned with 25 stunning landform maps, is the result of a 20-year project in which he set himself the goal of portraying geology and its practitioners in a way that would "arrest the attention of other people while achieving acceptability in the geologic community." He started with the intention of setting forth "a sort of cross section of North America at about the fortieth parallel" but wound up casting a much wider net. A measure of the scope of his tale is provided by the structure of Book 2: "In Suspect Terrain," which begins with a profile of Harris, examines the Delaware Water Gap as a fragment of the Appalachians, discusses the Appalachians and plate tectonics and presents the theory of continental glaciation. Book 2 and the four others fill out an absorbing picture of the former world--the North America of past geologic eras back to the beginning of the Mesozoic some 245 million years ago.
McPhee began studying the geology of the U.S. 20 years ago, cruising Interstate 80 in the company of geologists and listening intently to their decodings of the rock strata visible in road cuts. What look merely like colorful outcroppings to the uninitiated are actually records of deep time and the stupendous heavings, splittings, and crushings of the earth's crust. A strictly literary guy, McPhee was first drawn to geology by the poetics of its nomenclature and his love of land, but he found himself captivated as well by the personalities of the scientists he befriended and soon realized that what he had conceived of as a good idea for a single piece of writing was in fact the subject of a lifetime. He filled four books with accounts of his geological journeys across North America, books now legendary for rendering a technical discipline alluring enough for even the most science-phobic of readers and for elevating creative nonfiction to the level of art: Basin and Range (1981), In Suspect Terrain (1983), Rising from the Plains (1986), and Assembling California (1993). Here he brings those four books, revised and updated, together with one more, previously unpublished geological work, Crossing the Craton, a study of the low-profile country of the heartland. The five volumes together form a portrait of the continent--a magnificent narrative that not only tracks the drama of North American geological history but also chronicles the rapid evolution of the theories and practice of geology itself and tells the intriguing stories of people for whom love of rocks has meant love of life. Donna Seaman
From Kirkus Reviews
McPhee (Irons in the Fire, 1997, etc.) winds up his artful geohistory of the US by going deep into the heartland--Kansas, Nebraska--in pursuit of deep time: the Precambrian. Included in this collection are his four previous forays into geology--Basin and Range (1981, which, to encapsulate, delineated plate tectonics), In Suspect Terrain (1983, Appalachian geohistory and some broadsides at plate tectonic theory), Rising from the Plains (1986, Wyoming curiosities and environmental conundrums), and Assembling California (1993, a showcase for active tectonics). Here he adds ``Crossing the Craton''--craton being the rock basement of the continent--delving into the realms of ``isotopic and chemical signatures, cosmological data, and conjecture,'' in the company of geochronologist Randy Van Schmus. McPhee has a way of making deep structures seem freestanding, right there to ogle: ``the walls of the rift are three thousand feet sheer,'' theyre also 600 feet below the surface. Dexterous as ever, McPhee takes on the creation--early island arcs and vulcanism and microcontinents--and tells it with all the power and simplicity a genesis story deserves. (25 maps) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
“Tripling as a geology primer, an autobiography and a panorama of the nation, bejeweled with splendid vignettes and set-pieces, "Annals of the Former World" offers a view of America like no other. It is the outpouring of a master stylist. Yield to its geopoetry and have your eyes opened to a barely known aspect of the continent.” ―Roy Porter, Los Angeles Times
“John McPhee has produced, over nearly a quarter of a century, a deep philology of the continent. Annals of the Former World is surely a classic. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was timeless.” ―A.O. Scott, Village Voice
About the Author
John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. Also in 1965, he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the years since, he has written over 30 books, including Oranges (1967), Coming into the Country (1977), The Control of Nature (1989), The Founding Fish (2002), Uncommon Carriers (2007), and Silk Parachute (2011). Encounters with the Archdruid (1972) and The Curve of Binding Energy (1974) were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science. McPhee received the Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1977. In 1999, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
