Summaries of the major features of the geology of North America and the adjacent oceanic regions are presented in 20 chapters. Topics covered include concise reviews of current thinking about Precambrian basement, Phanerozoic orogens, cratonic basins, passive-margin geology of the Atlantic and Gulf Coast regions, marine and terrestrial geology of the Caribbean region and economic geology.
The incredible story of the creation of a continent—our continent— from the acclaimed author of The Last Volcano and Mask of the Sun. The immense scale of geologic time is difficult to comprehend. Our lives—and the entirety of human history—are mere nanoseconds on this timescale. Yet we hugely influenced by the land we live on. From shales and fossil fuels, from lake beds to soil composition, from elevation to fault lines, what could be more relevant that the history of the ground beneath our feet? For most of modern history, geologists could say little more about why mountains grew than the obvious: there were forces acting inside the Earth that caused mountains to rise. But what were those forces? And why did they act in some places of the planet and not at others? When the theory of plate tectonics was proposed, our concept of how the Earth worked experienced a momentous shift. As the Andes continue to rise, the Atlantic Ocean steadily widens, and Honolulu creeps ever closer to Tokyo, this seemingly imperceptible creep of the Earth is revealed in the landscape all around us. But tectonics cannot—and do not—explain everything about the wonders of the North American landscape. What about the Black Hills? Or the walls of chalk that stand amongst the rolling hills of west Kansas? Or the fact that the states of Washington and Oregon are slowly rotating clockwise, and there a diamond mine in Arizona? It all points to the geologic secrets hidden inside the 2-billion-year-old-continental masses. A whopping ten times older than the rocky floors of the ocean, continents hold the clues to the long history of our planet. With a sprightly narrative that vividly brings this science to life, John Dvorak's How the Mountains Grew will fill readers with a newfound appreciation for the wonders of the land we live on.
Allow yourself to be taken back into deep geologic time when strange creatures roamed the Earth and Western North America looked completely unlike the modern landscape. Volcanic islands stretched from Mexico to Alaska, most of the Pacific Rim didn’t exist yet, at least not as widespread dry land; terranes drifted from across the Pacific to dock on Western Americas’ shores creating mountains and more volcanic activity. Landscapes were transposed north or south by thousands of kilometers along huge fault systems. Follow these events through paleogeographic maps that look like satellite views of ancient Earth. Accompanying text takes the reader into the science behind these maps and the geologic history that they portray. The maps and text unfold the complex geologic history of the region as never seen before. Winner of the 2021 John D. Haun Landmark Publication Award, AAPG-Rocky Mountain Section
With a New Preface by the Author Through personal journeys and historical inquiry, this PEN Literary Award finalist explores how America’s still unfolding history and ideas of “race” have marked its people and the land. Sand and stone are Earth’s fragmented memory. Each of us, too, is a landscape inscribed by memory and loss. One life–defining lesson Lauret Savoy learned as a young girl was this: the American land did not hate. As an educator and Earth historian, she has tracked the continent’s past from the relics of deep time; but the paths of ancestors toward her—paths of free and enslaved Africans, colonists from Europe, and peoples indigenous to this land—lie largely eroded and lost. A provocative and powerful mosaic that ranges across a continent and across time, from twisted terrain within the San Andreas Fault zone to a South Carolina plantation, from national parks to burial grounds, from “Indian Territory” and the U.S.–Mexico Border to the U.S. capital, Trace grapples with a searing national history to reveal the often unvoiced presence of the past. In distinctive and illuminating prose that is attentive to the rhythms of language and landscapes, she weaves together human stories of migration, silence, and displacement, as epic as the continent they survey, with uplifted mountains, braided streams, and eroded canyons. Gifted with this manifold vision, and graced by a scientific and lyrical diligence, she delves through fragmented histories—natural, personal, cultural—to find shadowy outlines of other stories of place in America. "Every landscape is an accumulation," reads one epigraph. "Life must be lived amidst that which was made before." Courageously and masterfully, Lauret Savoy does so in this beautiful book: she lives there, making sense of this land and its troubled past, reconciling what it means to inhabit terrains of memory—and to be one.
Historic stratigraphic illustrations depict the earth beneath our feet in captivating hand-drawn diagrams. Each drawing tells a unique geologic story, exquisitely rendered in colors from pastel palettes to brilliant bolds that show evolving scientific graphic conventions over time. Created by federal and state geologists over the course of one hundred years, the maps reveal sedimentary rock layers that present an unexpected view of our treasured public lands, making this collection an important record of natural resources, as well as a beautiful display of map design. The fascinating history of the science behind the drawings is explored by sedimentary geologist Jody Bourgeois, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington's College of the Environment and a fellow of the Geological Society of America.
The dramatic journeys of the 19th century Gold Rush come to life in this geologist’s tour of the American West and the events that shaped the land. In 1848, news of the discovery of gold in California triggered an enormous wave of emigration toward the Pacific. The dramatic terrain these settlers crossed is so familiar to us now that it is hard to imagine how frightening—even godforsaken—its sheer rock faces and barren deserts once seemed to them. Hard Road West brings their perspective vividly to life, weaving together the epic overland journey of the covered wagon trains and the compelling story of the landscape they encountered. Taking readers along the 2,000-mile California Trail, Keith Meldahl uses settler’s diaries and letters—as well as his own experiences on the trail—to reveal how the geology and geography of the West shaped our nation’s westward expansion. He guides us through a landscape of sawtooth mountains, following the meager streams that served as lifelines through an arid land, all the way to California itself, where colliding tectonic plates created breathtaking scenery and planted the gold that lured travelers west in the first place. “Alternates seamlessly between vivid accounts of the 19th-century journey and lucid explanations of the geological events that shaped the landscape traveled.”—Library Journal
