In Suspect Terrain

Rating:
Summary: Fire and Ice......
Review: In Suspect Terrain by John McPhee details the geology of Interstate 80 from the Delaware Water Gap to the state of Indiana. Primarily concerned with the formation of the Appalachians, the intrusion and withdrawal of vast inland seas, and the impact of widespread glaciation, the book introduces us to Anita Harris, a geologist who is less enamored of plate tectonic theory than most. Though far from discounting the theory altogether, Harris, through McPhee, displays for the reader several "tectonic" inconsistencies prevalent in the Appalachian region.

As in Basin and Range, a previous work, McPhee brings a traveler's commentary and an historian's insight to the scientific discussion making geology, perhaps, more enticing to the layman than anyone who has come before him. Indeed, were all science so artfully presented us commonfolk might have a better grasp of that which can often confuse and intimidate. I thoroughly enjoyed In Suspect Terrain and look eagerly forward to other McPhee efforts.

Rating:
Summary: ABSOLUTELY EXCELLENT !!
Review: John McPhee is an EXCELLENT author - I enjoyed this book just as much as his book on the NJ pine Barren

Rating:
Summary: Superb naturalist
Review: McPhee writes elegantly plain English. He finds awesome beauty under foot, in vistas, and in words. His fine and pleasing writing deftly evokes the prodigious forces that shaped the landscape along Interstate 80 from Brooklyn to Chicago. McPhee is a magician: he makes deep geological time come so alive you can almost feel the earth move under your feet as it responds to the titanic forces of shifting continents, water, and ice.

McPhee writes epitomes of geological processes: here glacial forms (and diamonds!) in Indiana, there the Delaware Water Gap, or fossil thermometry by his "tour guide" Anita Harris, frank embarrassments to plate tectonics, Appalachian mountain making, petroleum cooking, or again the Ice Ages. This paean to nature, without mysticism, is printed in an old fashioned typeface on quality paper. It has no maps, sections, or illustrations. If you indexed the somewhat non-linear text yourself, this would be an instructive companion to take along on your next trip on eastern Route 80 (or an entire traverse of America if you add the other three books in McPhee's impressive "cross-section" of North America: Rising from the Plain, Basin & Range, Assembling California).

Rating:
Summary: Superb naturalist
Review: McPhee writes elegantly plain English. He finds awesome beauty under foot, in vistas, and in words. His fine and pleasing writing deftly evokes the prodigious forces that shaped the landscape along Interstate 80 from Brooklyn to Chicago. McPhee is a magician: he makes deep geological time come so alive you can almost feel the earth move under your feet as it responds to the titanic forces of shifting continents, water, and ice.

McPhee writes epitomes of geological processes: here glacial forms (and diamonds!) in Indiana, there the Delaware Water Gap, or fossil thermometry by his "tour guide" Anita Harris, frank embarrassments to plate tectonics, Appalachian mountain making, petroleum cooking, or again the Ice Ages. This paean to nature, without mysticism, is printed in an old fashioned typeface on quality paper. It has no maps, sections, or illustrations. If you indexed the somewhat non-linear text yourself, this would be an instructive companion to take along on your next trip on eastern Route 80 (or an entire traverse of America if you add the other three books in McPhee's impressive "cross-section" of North America: Rising from the Plain, Basin & Range, Assembling California).

Rating:
Summary: Terrain or terrane
Review: This book is filled with scientific terms straining the general reader's capacity to follow the narrative. Wonderful, clear-speaking John McPhee's lurching off into geology is analogous to Doris Lessing losing her readers in science fiction yarns. Fortunately most of us have been to New York City or have spent time traveling Route 80. Changes do not come in a slow steady march in geology. Geologic time is punctuated by catastrophes. Geology repeats itself. Geology is named for Gaea, daughter of Chaos says McPhee's informant, Anita Harris. The right bedrock, the right angle of deep caused the pond of boulders in Hickory State Park, Pennsylvania to be formed. Geologists are detectives. Road cuts are incredibly useful to them. Without them they are reduced to drilling holes straight down and studying streams. Streams and rivers form later than rock. The limit of glaciation in New York City is reflected in the subway system. The book is rich and informative. It is organized around the career of and the author's travels with Anita Harris, a wholly reasonable focus for the study.

Rating:
Summary: Terrain or terrane
Review: This book is filled with scientific terms straining the general reader's capacity to follow the narrative. Wonderful, clear-speaking John McPhee's lurching off into geology is analogous to Doris Lessing losing her readers in science fiction yarns. Fortunately most of us have been to New York City or have spent time traveling Route 80. Changes do not come in a slow steady march in geology. Geologic time is punctuated by catastrophes. Geology repeats itself. Geology is named for Gaea, daughter of Chaos says McPhee's informant, Anita Harris. The right bedrock, the right angle of deep caused the pond of boulders in Hickory State Park, Pennsylvania to be formed. Geologists are detectives. Road cuts are incredibly useful to them. Without them they are reduced to drilling holes straight down and studying streams. Streams and rivers form later than rock. The limit of glaciation in New York City is reflected in the subway system. The book is rich and informative. It is organized around the career of and the author's travels with Anita Harris, a wholly reasonable focus for the study.

Rating:
Summary: state of the art - now 20 years ago
Review: This is an excellent book, in which McPhee follows an original and stolid geologist on her job and records her musings and concerns with her science. It is written in absolutely luminous prose, with a clarity that can only be called perfect. As he travels with the geologist, ideas keep cropping up that are explained and examined, sometimes adding historical context, such as the long passages on Agassiz. I enjoyed the flow of the narrative and it held my interest completely, indeed I was in awe of his writing talent.

In my reading, there were two principal scientific ideas. First, McPhee lets the geologist question the pervasive acceptance of plate tectonics, that is, how it is now the first explanation that geologists seek to advance, which may mean that they do not seek alternative explanations when appropriate. More specifically, the geologist accepts the theory for oceanic plates, but not the land/continental versions. She chafes against the preference of many young geologists to create micro-plates for every new unexplained phenomenon, a kind of reductionism that may be similar to that used by proponents of "heavenly spheres" to explain the motions of the planets prior to Kepler and Newton. Second, McPhee goes over the notion of glacial ice flows and what they explain about the current landscapes. As I was quite ignorent of these theories except in the crudest outline, I learned a lot from this. What I cannot do is evaluate whether, after 20 years, this book is outdated, which it almost certainly is.

Beyond those 2 issues, the reader also gets to know how geologists work and think, which was equally fascinating and pleasurable for me. THere are long passages on a technique that the geologist developed - using the teeth of long-disappeared marine worms to date and evaluate the conditions of the sediments in which they appear - that are clearly explained. Nonetheless, the level of the reasoning and vocabulary can at times be technical and was sometimes beyond my level: those "teeth" above are called conodonts, which I happened to know about from a Gould essay; otherwise, I would have found use of that word confusing, as I did many others that are explained perhaps once. THat made the book quite dense and necessary to re-read in certain sections, which is not a criticism so much as an indication of the experience the reader should expect.

Warmly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: state of the art - now 20 years ago
Review: This is an excellent book, in which McPhee follows an original and stolid geologist on her job and records her musings and concerns with her science. It is written in absolutely luminous prose, with a clarity that can only be called perfect. As he travels with the geologist, ideas keep cropping up that are explained and examined, sometimes adding historical context, such as the long passages on Agassiz. I enjoyed the flow of the narrative and it held my interest completely, indeed I was in awe of his writing talent.

In my reading, there were two principal scientific ideas. First, McPhee lets the geologist question the pervasive acceptance of plate tectonics, that is, how it is now the first explanation that geologists seek to advance, which may mean that they do not seek alternative explanations when appropriate. More specifically, the geologist accepts the theory for oceanic plates, but not the land/continental versions. She chafes against the preference of many young geologists to create micro-plates for every new unexplained phenomenon, a kind of reductionism that may be similar to that used by proponents of "heavenly spheres" to explain the motions of the planets prior to Kepler and Newton. Second, McPhee goes over the notion of glacial ice flows and what they explain about the current landscapes. As I was quite ignorent of these theories except in the crudest outline, I learned a lot from this. What I cannot do is evaluate whether, after 20 years, this book is outdated, which it almost certainly is.

Beyond those 2 issues, the reader also gets to know how geologists work and think, which was equally fascinating and pleasurable for me. THere are long passages on a technique that the geologist developed - using the teeth of long-disappeared marine worms to date and evaluate the conditions of the sediments in which they appear - that are clearly explained. Nonetheless, the level of the reasoning and vocabulary can at times be technical and was sometimes beyond my level: those "teeth" above are called conodonts, which I happened to know about from a Gould essay; otherwise, I would have found use of that word confusing, as I did many others that are explained perhaps once. THat made the book quite dense and necessary to re-read in certain sections, which is not a criticism so much as an indication of the experience the reader should expect.

Warmly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: All in one ZIP code . . . ?
Review: Whatever drove John McPhee to writing of geology should be found and packaged. It would find a ready market in university science departments. This finest of American essayists produced a series of exemplary books on how North America came to be. His journeys gleaning the information he provides us, traversed the continent, chiefly along an Interstate highway, examining roadcuts, adjacent outcrops and surrounding mountains. His guides were America's foremost geologists, their work often hiding them from the public gaze. McPhee brings them into view, relating their work, their personalities, their accomplishment through unmatched descriptive prose.

In this book, McPhee teams up with geologist Anita Harris in touring the eastern mountains of North America from the coast to the southern shores of the Great Lakes. The journey is far more than the examination and cataloging of rocks. McPhee has elsewhere expressed his sense of history with peerless ability. Here, he extends history to deep time as he and Harris examine the formation of the Appalachian Mountain chains. The lithic record, as might be imagined, is hardly clear-cut. Rock formations are jumbled, twisted, folded over in a confusing testimony to the Earth's action in forming continents. McPhee, in the beginning, is as confused as the rocks - and the reader. Harris, with admirable patience, explains the rocks and what they express, helping McPhee, and us, to see their history. "I haven't worked at this level since I don't know when," she says of his novice status. Her knowledge and his prose skills manage to advance our knowledge painlessly. The rocks, however, daunt their efforts to paint a uncomplicated picture.

When the idea of plate tectonics emerged in the 1960s, McPhee explains, it was a revolutionary view of our planet. Replacing the older "drying, wrinkling apple" scenario, plate tectonics provided an elegant, sweeping picture of continental forming. Within a decade, the North American Plate, the Pacific Plate, the Eurasian Plate took places in the niches of our memories. Schools quickly adopted the new science, supported by expressively illustrated textbooks. "Continental drift" became a "buzzword" in jokes, advertising, and other memetic devices. To Anita Harris, this ready acceptance blinded even geologists to the truly complex record of the area she dubs "suspect terrain." Through McPhee she shows us that "a given place will have been at one time below fresh water, at another under brine, will have been mountainous country, a quiet plain, an equatorial desert, an arctic coast, a coal swamp, and a river delta - all in one ZIP Code." All this activity, no matter how anciently derived, requires explanation. Harris reminds him that "geology" is derived from Gaea, the daughter of Chaos. Recounting the source of Appalachian land forms remains an unfulfilled task.

Along with continental movement are the vagaries of weather. Mountain building is always associated with erosion, McPhee reminds us. He goes on to describe the effects of the greatest eroder of them all, the three kilometre thick ice sheets that pushed Canadian diamonds into Indiana. Along with gemstones, the glaciers bore a cargo of rocks and soil acquired in their journey southward. The "suspect terrain" this bears marks of ice, volcanic activity, unexplained mountain building and oceanic advances and retreats. It may not be a pretty picture, but in McPhee's descriptive hand, its fascination is endless. For learning geology or simply to bask in superior writing skills, this book is outdone by only one means - more John McPhee.

Rating:
Summary: All in one ZIP code . . . ?
Review: Whatever drove John McPhee to writing of geology should be found and packaged. It would find a ready market in university science departments. This finest of American essayists produced a series of exemplary books on how North America came to be. His journeys gleaning the information he provides us, traversed the continent, chiefly along an Interstate highway, examining roadcuts, adjacent outcrops and surrounding mountains. His guides were America's foremost geologists, their work often hiding them from the public gaze. McPhee brings them into view, relating their work, their personalities, their accomplishment through unmatched descriptive prose.

In this book, McPhee teams up with geologist Anita Harris in touring the eastern mountains of North America from the coast to the southern shores of the Great Lakes. The journey is far more than the examination and cataloging of rocks. McPhee has elsewhere expressed his sense of history with peerless ability. Here, he extends history to deep time as he and Harris examine the formation of the Appalachian Mountain chains. The lithic record, as might be imagined, is hardly clear-cut. Rock formations are jumbled, twisted, folded over in a confusing testimony to the Earth's action in forming continents. McPhee, in the beginning, is as confused as the rocks - and the reader. Harris, with admirable patience, explains the rocks and what they express, helping McPhee, and us, to see their history. "I haven't worked at this level since I don't know when," she says of his novice status. Her knowledge and his prose skills manage to advance our knowledge painlessly. The rocks, however, daunt their efforts to paint a uncomplicated picture.

When the idea of plate tectonics emerged in the 1960s, McPhee explains, it was a revolutionary view of our planet. Replacing the older "drying, wrinkling apple" scenario, plate tectonics provided an elegant, sweeping picture of continental forming. Within a decade, the North American Plate, the Pacific Plate, the Eurasian Plate took places in the niches of our memories. Schools quickly adopted the new science, supported by expressively illustrated textbooks. "Continental drift" became a "buzzword" in jokes, advertising, and other memetic devices. To Anita Harris, this ready acceptance blinded even geologists to the truly complex record of the area she dubs "suspect terrain." Through McPhee she shows us that "a given place will have been at one time below fresh water, at another under brine, will have been mountainous country, a quiet plain, an equatorial desert, an arctic coast, a coal swamp, and a river delta - all in one ZIP Code." All this activity, no matter how anciently derived, requires explanation. Harris reminds him that "geology" is derived from Gaea, the daughter of Chaos. Recounting the source of Appalachian land forms remains an unfulfilled task.

Along with continental movement are the vagaries of weather. Mountain building is always associated with erosion, McPhee reminds us. He goes on to describe the effects of the greatest eroder of them all, the three kilometre thick ice sheets that pushed Canadian diamonds into Indiana. Along with gemstones, the glaciers bore a cargo of rocks and soil acquired in their journey southward. The "suspect terrain" this bears marks of ice, volcanic activity, unexplained mountain building and oceanic advances and retreats. It may not be a pretty picture, but in McPhee's descriptive hand, its fascination is endless. For learning geology or simply to bask in superior writing skills, this book is outdone by only one means - more John McPhee.