Book Description
Scott Baldridge presents a concise guide to the geology of the Southwestern U.S. Two billion years of Earth history are represented in the rocks and landscape of the Southwest U.S., creating natural wonders such as the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, and Death Valley. This region is considered a geologist's "dream", attracting a large number of undergraduate field classes and amateur geologists. The volume will prove invaluable to students and will also appeal to anyone interested in the geology and landscape of the region's National Parks. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

positive reciew of SW geology
I have been looking for this kind of book for years and this hit it right on the spot. The condition and price were also spot on. thanks

It's a terrific book!
This book is terrific! As a foreigner, I learned a lot about the history of geology by reading this book. Highly recommended.

The big geologic picture on a land where geology dominates the view
The title of this book says it all.The story begins two billion years ago and follows the formation of the continental crust of what is now the southwestern US.It then follows that chunk of land to the present, as supercontinents form and disintegrate, island chains collide, and mountains rise and fall.Unlike so many books about the geology of the southwest, Baldridge focuses on the plate tectonics behind the processes.This approach allows the reader to understand the "why" behind advancing and retreating seas, uplifts, faults and volcanoes.The geographic area studied is the southwest, although the Colorado Plateau seems to gather the most attention.It is seen in a broad geological context that includes what happened in places like Death Valley, the Rio Grande Rift and Southern Rocky Mountains. Baldridge places his explanation in standard geologic time, but his chapter breaks are in locations driven by the regional geology, not the standard hierarchy.For a Grand Canyon example, the Chuar and Tonto groups are a single chapter, a fresh (and justifiable) perspective.The story that comes through is a "life story" of the southwest, in which a reader can see the region's geology evolve, illustrating how events in its past shape its response to new conditions.

The book's broad scope means that the history of individual rock layers are often not there - indeed, many layers are not even mentioned (although the fame of Grand Canyon's rock column is evident, most of ours are).The layers serve to illustrate a "story line" driven by the forces acting on the land, they do not break the story into pieces because of what is (or is not) preserved in today's exposures.In developing this evolutionary presentation, Baldridge has to sort through many, often conflicting, hypotheses.He does a good job of finding common threads.In many cases, he presents different mechanisms but concludes with the salient points that seem to be areas of agreement or with the conditions that a solution must explain.

This book is not for the geologically faint of heart.It assumes a pre-existing general understanding of plate tectonics and other geological principles.It is not the place to learn how plate tectonics works, but is the best place I have found to understand how plate tectonics worked on the Colorado Plateau.It will not tell you how the Grand Canyon was carved, how Monument Valley formed, what makes the Supai Group red, or other specific questions.But it does provide the vast historical panorama against which such questions can be asked.From a degree of technicality, it is less technical than Beus and Morales' Grand Canyon Geology, but certainly well beyond Price's Introduction to Grand Canyon Geology.In the preface, Baldridge says his target audience is "upper level undergraduates and graduates."I would expand this to include anyone with a real interest in the Colorado Plateau, and who wants the "big picture" only hinted at in most treatments of the region (like Baars' The Colorado Plateau: A Geologic History).For readers with a more casual familiarity with geology, it could be a difficult read, but the rewards are great for a comprehensive understanding of the area's history.

I liked it - a lot!

Geology of the American Southwest: A Journey Through Two Billion Years of Plate-Tectonic History
An excellent introduction to the geology of the American Southwest, including most of the Colorado Plateau in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, as well as parts of California (in particular Death Valley), Nevada, and Texas. All chapters devote considerable space to a discussion of the plate tectonic settings and paleogeography of the geologic period under consideration. The tectonic settings and processes are of central importance in understanding the amazing and extensive rock record being described. This book contains a host of useful maps, stratigraphic and correlative diagrams, and crisp images of many rock formations discussed in the text. For example, a figure on page 170 I found particularly useful displays a cross section of the famous Jurassic sedimentary rocks spanning the Arizona-Utah border (which is equally applicable to southwestern and far western Colorado), showing schematically but clearly the complex horizontal and vertical relationships, including unconformities, of the major Jurassic rock units present in what can be at times a confusing area of geological terrain. The geology of many of the National Parks and Monuments in the American Southwest, particularly Grand Canyon National Park, is interwoven very nicely with the overall theme and level of the book. All in all, a very useful reference covering 2 billion years of Earth history in this part of the United States, particularly appropriate for undergraduates and graduate students studying geology and the Earth sciences. An extensive bibliography, cited frequently in the text, provides many points of introduction to the supporting literature, and opportunities for further exploration. Undergraduates who plan on participating in a geology field camp in the American Southwest will no doubt benefit by reading this book before their departure. ... Read more

Amazon.com
Widely dismissed as crank science in earlier generations, the theory of plate tectonics--which explains the movement of continents in geological time, as well as the formation of the earth's major features--is now largely accepted as fact within the scientific community.

Drawing on the memories of major theoreticians in the field, scientist and historian Naomi Oreskes offers a vivid history of just how that transformation occurred. She describes the early quest on the part of James Dana, Alfred Wegner, J. H. Hodgson, and other scientists to account for the mechanics of earthquakes and certain puzzling features of geomorphology, a quest widened and strengthened by the work of deep-ocean explorers who were able, beginning in the 1960s, to study tectonics at work far below the surface of the world's waters. Such advances, as pioneer Peter Molnar and others explain, did not immediately change the way geologists went about their work, but they quickly went on to revolutionize science--and then, as such things do, to become orthodox.

A useful reference for students of geology and the history of science, this book is also easily accessible to nonspecialists. --Gregory McNameeBook Description
Can anyone today imagine the earth without its puzzle-piece construction of plate tectonics? The very term, "plate tectonics," coined only thirty-five years ago, is now part of the vernacular, part of everyone's understanding of the way the earth works. The theory, research, data collection, and analysis that came together in the late 1960's to constitute plate tectonics is one of the great scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century. Scholarly books have been written about tectonics, but none by the key scientists-players themselves. In Plate Tectonics, editor Naomi Oreskes has assembled those scientists who played crucial roles in developing the theory to tell - for the first time, and in their own words - the stories of their involvement in the extraordinary confrimation of the theory. The book opens with an overview of the history of plate tectonics, including in-context definitions of the key terms that are discussed throughout the book. Oreskes explains how the forerunners of the theory, Wegener and du Toit, raised questions that were finally answered thirty years later, and how scientists working at the key academic institutions - Cambridge and Princeton Universities, Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Geological Observatory, and the University of California-San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography - competed and collaborated until the theory coalesced. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Plate Tectonics
Plate Tectonics:An Insider's History of the Moden Theory of the Earth edited by Naomi Oreskes is a book about the movement of the land masses on the Earth and how the theory of plate tectonics came about.In the book there are seventeen original essays by the scientists who made earth history as they explain how placte tectonics works.

Plate tectonics is a science that you'd think has been around for a long time, but in fact, not until 1968 has the theory, research, data collection and analysis came together.The movement of relatively static land masses was not a popular idea, especially in the oil industry, where they believed that tectonics was not a viable theory.

This book takes us on a journey in history giving us a historical background of continental drift to plate tectonics.What I find extemely interesting about this book is the actual players in the development of the theory are represented here.Giving their accounts and insight into why things are as they are... explaining their thought processes in confirmation of the theory of plate tectonics.

Each author gives a piece of the puzzle until there is enough evidence that a workable theory can be developed.These authors tell us in their own words, making for a compelling book about discovery.Also, the reader will find an overview of definitions of terms used throughout the book, this keeps the readers interest as you will not be overburdoned with terms you do not understnd.

All in all, this is a very readable book as it explains the science of plate tectonics and the inter-relationship of this science to man's well-being on earth.

Delightful "insiders' history"
This book will delight all historians of science.The indefatigable Naomi Oreskes, known for her excellent history of continental drift and plate tectonics, has assembled reminiscences by the surviving founders of plate tectonics theory.Dr. Oreskes deserves the highest praise for this. Alas, the senior figures such as Arthur Holmes and Harry Hess are no longer with us; the writers of these essays were graduate students in the critical early 1960s.Now elders themselves, they recall the excitement of coming on the scene just when all was breaking loose. Even the most sober number-crunchers manage to write with infectious enthusiasm.The theories are explained in a notably accessible fashion, and the varied intellectual currents of the time (and, in some essays, subsequent decades) are brought out. My one complaint--as a reader interested in the history of science--is that the writers don't say much about their personal lives.One suspects that some of them have no personal lives beyond number-crunching.Most, however, hint at or partially reveal rich and interesting backgrounds that clearly affected their thoughts. Only Peter Molnar does much more than hint, and, although he claims that one reader called his essay "unexpurgated," even he is rather reticent.Still, this volume is a gold mine, providing a very different look at one of the most "revolutionary" (in scare quotes) theoretical advances in the history of science. The consensus here seems to be that it was indeed a revolution, at least in the eyes of American graduate students of the 1960s, but not a Kuhnian revolution brought about by highly intellectualized "paradigm shifts" (Kuhn 1962); it was brought about by new field methods that brought floods of new data. These allowed the development of real mathematical models.One can only stand in awe of the amount of work this entailed. Several authors speak of working day and night, week after week, on data entry and computer jockeying. They managed this without any loss of enthusiasm--quite the reverse, apparently.Ah, youth.

Plate Tectonics as told by those that assembled the theory
This is a highly informative account of both the ideas that led to the development of Plate Tectonic theory and the concepts of how the earth works. The book is engaging to read and is understandable to an audience at the level of Scientific American. I am using it as a required text in my course at Columbia University titled "Plate-tectonic theory and its geological corollaries". For those fascinated in how the human mind puts observations together to build ideas and then test them, this book is first rate. Each chapter is crafted by a different researcher describing his or her contribution to the over all theory. The reader encounters brilliant and original ideas discarded by peer review, scientists peeping over each other's shoulder, the rush to the goal line to publish first, competition for access to key data sets, a last minute conversion from the static earth perspective, and the thrill of exploration at sea. The authors presents a wonderful history in Chapter 1 of the intellectual passage from the first inkling of continental drift in the 16th century to the breakthrough in 1966-1968 of the full-blown theory of rigid lithosphere paving stones and narrow plate boundaries. ... Read more