Product Description

'A dazzling achievement. Richard Fortey is without peer among science writers. ' Bill Bryson'The Earth is a true delight: full of awe-inspiring details...it blends travel, history, reportage and science to creat an unforgettable picture of our ancient earth. ' Sunday TimesThe face of the Earth, criss-crossed by chains of mountains like the scars of old wounds has changed constantly over billions of years, and the testament of the remote past is all around us. In this book, Richard Fortey teaches us how to read its character, laying out the dominions of the world before us. He shows how everything -- human culture, natural history, even the shape of cities -- roots back to a deeper geological truth. Far from being the driest of sciences, he proves that geology informs all our lives in the most intimate way. Nothing in this book seems to be at rest. The surface of the Earth dilates and collapses; seas and mountains rise and fall; continents move. We climb the Alps, wallow in Icelandic hot springs, dive down to the ocean floor; we explore the barren rocks of Newfoundland, walk through the lush ecosystems of Hawaii, cross the salt flats of Oman and saunter along the San Andreas Fault. And Fortey is the ideal guide, his descriptions of natural beauty as memorable as the best travel-writers, his prose as gripping as the best novelist, his crystal-clear scientific explanations fascinating and often surprising.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #199782 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-01
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 501 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Earth: An Intimate History is prize-winning science writer Richard Fortey's latest book and an ambitious attempt to tell the geological story of planet Earth for the general reader. Several centuries and the combined efforts of thousands of professional geologists have been required to make any real sense of the Earth's structure and its 4.5 billion-year history. That Fortey manages to turn the most important aspects of all this into an enjoyable narrative for the general reader is a considerable achievement.

The book is a sort of guided tour around a number of geological sites with which Fortey is personally familiar, such as the Grand Canyon, the European Alps and Vesuvius (the description of the eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii in AD 79 by Pliny the Younger is probably the first clear and objective description of a geological phenomenon.) He then uses their particular geological details to build a more general story of the geology of earth as it is generally understood today.

As a professional geologist at London's Natural History Museum, Fortey is well-qualified to tell this story. His writing skills have been widely acclaimed in earlier books such as Life: An Unauthorised Biography and Trilobite Eyewitness to Evolution. By giving the story a historical slant we can more readily understand how the present understanding of the earth story has been built up over the centuries and it introduces real people into the narrative. Consequently, the more technical aspects of present day earth science are rendered more palatable and understandable. The text is supported by a number of black and white diagrams and other pictures, which help illustrate some of the more complex processes and features of the earth. --Douglas Palmer.

Review
Praise for Richard Fortey's work:'This is not a book for people who like science books. It is a book for people who love books, and life... [Fortey] has written a wonderful book.' Tim Radford, Guardian'Read this book because it is, indeed, the best natural history of the first four billion years of life on earth.' John Gribbin, Sunday Times'Fortey writes beautifully and this is a wonderful biography of rock and life... He has restored palaeontology to its rightful place in the pantheon.' Lewis Wolpert, Observer'Richard Fortey is a scientist... but his big, rich history of four billion years of evolution is written with an artist's zest for life and language... Anyone who wants to understand how we came to be here on earth, 4,000,000,000 years after life began, should read this sparkling book.' Maggie Gee, Daily Telegraph

Telegraph
'...a thoroughly engrossing biography of the earth…it is as though we’re leafing through the psychiatric case history of our world...'

Customer Reviews

How the earth works
Everyone ought to read this book. I never thought that a layman like me would be interested in geology but this book opened my eyes. He writes clearly and to the extaent that it is possible simply. (At least I could understand it) His words paint a clear picture of the changing earth; he uses places that are at least familiar, to show how the earth is the way it is and the way it was. He shows that the earth is a place of constant change and that the way it is now is not going to be permanent. His enthusiasm for his subject comes over in his writing which enthralled me in its description of the movements of the plates. My only very slight complaint is that some of the illustrations are a bit dull and that a glossary would have been helpful. But it is a truly fascinating work.

Excellent - a truly global view
This book is simply a magnificent account of the Earth's structure and how it "works". Taking as his framework a series of visits to key sites - including Hawaii, Vesuvius, the Alps, Newfoundland and the North West coast of Scotland - Fortey explains not only the structure of the Earth and how it came to be as it is, but also how our understanding of that structure has grown and developed over the past 2000 years. He also finds space to fit in (relevant) musings on the nature of progress in science, ecology and the effect of humans on the environment, and much more. A recurring theme is the effect of the underlying geology on the visible land and the way it is used. (In passing, I think this book would make excellent television.)

The book concludes with a virtual tour of the globe, swooping down to comment on this feature or that aspect, unifying the earlier, more particular studies in a spectacular fashion.

Fortey's writing is beautiful and well worth reading for its own sake, and his explanations are excellent. There are relatively few illustrations and diagrams, and more of these might have helped, but this is a very slight flaw in a wonderful book.

Does the Earth move for you?
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.