Book Review Double Header: Annals of the Former World & Bretz's Flood
John Soennichsen's book Bretz's Flood falls into that strange confluence that you often find in better quality histories of geology. It's hard to describe adequately, but it involves an intermixing of history and location that ends up feeling quite different than other histories. First of all is the direct historical level- a simple accounting of the process by which the scientist made their discovery. In this case, it was J. Harlen Bretz's discovery of the Bretz/Missoula Flood, a colossal flood at the end of the last major Ice Age that carved its way from Montana all the way to the Pacific. (Later geologists confirmed that there were actually multiple floods.) Second is the actual geological history of the terrain itself- geology is inherently the most historical of the earth sciences. The third level is the Kuhnian paradigm shift present with the largest discoveries- in this case, the battle in geology between uniformitarianism and catastrophism.
As far as the location front goes- location is essentially everything in geology. There's no such thing as a pure geological force- instead, geology is examining confluences of countless chemical, physical, biological, climatological, hydrological, etc, etc forces. Geology, for the most part, only makes sense in terms of discussing anything in context of location. (There are exceptions, of course, like mineralogy. Most geological laws and theories, however, amount to ways to easily classify and understand processes likely to have occurred in a locale.)
Oh, and the book is excellent, you should definitely read it.
John McPhee's Annals of the Former World is a geological history of America arranged along a latitudinal axis- namely the 40th parallel as followed by Interstate 80. Annals of the Former World has the same confluence I discussed for Bretz's Flood, but to an even greater degree. It perfectly captures the spatial aspect of geological time in a way that few other works do. The book was written in five chunks over a period of twenty years, and so McPhee takes you on not just a physical journey across America, or a temporal journey through geological time, but also a temporal journey through the development of the science itself. When McPhee started the project in 1978, plate tectonics was still a relative youngster, and hadn't been fully accepted by the geological community- and even where it had been, everyone was still working out the implications of the groundbreaking (pardon the pun) theory. It was as big of a deal in geology as natural selection had been in biology. Over the course of the book, you get to see geology come to fully embrace the implications of plate tectonics- a full Kuhnian paradigm shift- and it's a fascinating voyage.
Annals of the Former World, if anything, far overshadows Bretz's Flood. That's not a mark against the latter at all, of course- Bretz's Flood is excellent. Annals of the Former World won a Pulitzer prize in nonfiction for good reason, however. John McPhee is one of those rare nonfiction writers whose books grip me as hard as an especially thrilling novel- I have trouble putting them down. McPhee is clearly passionate about his subject matter, and it bleeds through in his lyrical writing. (Not something I usually praise popular science writers for!) McPhee is well worth your time, and I can't recommend him highly enough.
Also, I wanted to show off some of my recent book acquisitions! Anything look interesting to you? Let me know, I'd be happy to review it!
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