The Company I Kept: The Autobiography of a Geologist (Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences Series, Volume 58)

Rating:
Summary: A thin section of the life of a gentleman geologist
Review: In this work, the author considers his professional life through reminiscences of his academic acquaintances. In this way John Rodgers presents the rarified world of academia in general and the study of geology in particular, though very few workaday details are recounted.

He repeatedly writes things akin to, "Later in August I visited Dr. Nabholz for two days in his field area, in the mountains around the head of the Vorderrhein. Those rocks had a good deal in common with those that Bearth had shown me and indeed provided a small test of my hypothesis, favorable as it turned out." And he essentially leaves the description of the encounter at that. We don't learn much about what Rodgers really studied and we don't hear descriptions of the areas he visited. Norway could be the basically the same as China for all we know based on the sparse descriptions he gives.

Having majored in geology as an undergraduate myself, I enjoyed reading the book for the reminiscences that the book called up for me. But it occurred to me that someone who has not participated in a geological field trip would not know what really went on during such an excursion, or what the real objective was, after reading this book.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is Rodgers' story of how he contributed to helping the Japanese people just after World War II. They were in danger of starving and, as a civilian employee of the U.S. government, Rodgers toured the Pacific Islands in search of a source of mineral fertilizer so the Japanese could grow rice.

So, in short, if you are an academic or a geologist, you may enjoy reading this book. For one, it gives a taste of how academia has changed over the years. It is also a small picture of the life of one gentleman geologist.

Rating:
Summary: A thin section of the life of a gentleman geologist
Review: In this work, the author considers his professional life through reminiscences of his academic acquaintances. In this way John Rodgers presents the rarified world of academia in general and the study of geology in particular, though very few workaday details are recounted.

He repeatedly writes things akin to, "Later in August I visited Dr. Nabholz for two days in his field area, in the mountains around the head of the Vorderrhein. Those rocks had a good deal in common with those that Bearth had shown me and indeed provided a small test of my hypothesis, favorable as it turned out." And he essentially leaves the description of the encounter at that. We don't learn much about what Rodgers really studied and we don't hear descriptions of the areas he visited. Norway could be the basically the same as China for all we know based on the sparse descriptions he gives.

Having majored in geology as an undergraduate myself, I enjoyed reading the book for the reminiscences that the book called up for me. But it occurred to me that someone who has not participated in a geological field trip would not know what really went on during such an excursion, or what the real objective was, after reading this book.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is Rodgers' story of how he contributed to helping the Japanese people just after World War II. They were in danger of starving and, as a civilian employee of the U.S. government, Rodgers toured the Pacific Islands in search of a source of mineral fertilizer so the Japanese could grow rice.

So, in short, if you are an academic or a geologist, you may enjoy reading this book. For one, it gives a taste of how academia has changed over the years. It is also a small picture of the life of one gentleman geologist.