Rating: 
Summary: A very good text, if limited in scope.
Review: I am an unabashed McPhee fan. See my review of "In Control of Nature". However, this book does not rate the usual five stars, owing to a decision McPhee probably had little hand in making: the book's title. So far as he peoples this book with the usual McPhee genre of characters, and so far as McPhee explains the geological considerations he addresses, i.e., CENTRAL California, the book is a great read, and would easily serve as fine regional geology textbook. However, the book neither addresses volcanic Northern California nor the area south of the Tehachapis to any meaningful extent. In that sense, the book was disappointing. I still recommend the book, but I feel potential readers should not be misled by an overbroad title.
Rating: 
Summary: Test book writers could take lessons from John McPhee
Review: I read the series in the New Yorker. When the book published a short time later, I bought the book, read it gave it to a friend, who gave it to a friend and so forth. Bought another copy which I gave to my daughter's third grade teacher. So I am on my third copy, but found value from re-reading this book several times. I now go by quarries and road cuts wishing I could stop and get the understanding of what is happening in the geology. This is our world and McPhee does an excellent job of allowing us to understand how it works. .
Rating:
Summary: A geologic road accident
Review: If anyone tells you "science destroys beauty," respond by handing them a McPhee. Any of his works will suffice, but this one is a special treasure. It's the completion of a continent-wide tour across the United State. McPhee escorts a succession of geologists who have explained to him why the theory of continental drift requires revision. The modifiers are local geological conditions, each region telling its own tale of lithic activity. In California, the story becomes almost bizarre. John McPhee might well be considered the only writer of science who could present the story in understandable fashion. Perhaps, but he would counter that in Eldridge Moores, he enjoyed a tutor of exceptional value to guide him.The idea of plate tectonics was a revolution in viewing the earth. Previous thinking was nearly all limited to regional, often arcane, activity. Plate tectonics was the first truly global image of the planet's workings. It was elegant, universal, and it explained so much, so well, that fitting it to conditions was almost simple. Plates move, crunch one another, raise mountains, often with spewing volcanoes, and end their career by sinking below the crust. Look at a map of California [easy to do, since there's one at the front of the book]. It all seems so manifestly organized. Parallel mountain ranges running north-south, separated by logically placed valleys. But the Sierra Nevada stands in lofty majesty compared to the Coast Range standing west across the Great Valley. It shouldn't. According to Moores, that's symptomatic. By plate tectonics' definition, it should be the Coast Range that should rising in reaction to the pressure of the continental movement. And why is the Great Valley so wide if a whole continent is trying to crowd the Sierra Nevada west? Moores suggests that it's because the real western boundary of the North American Plate is around Salt Lake City. The Mormon capital as a Monterey or Santa Barbara requires some reflective thinking, but Moores knows how to read the rocks. And McPhee knows how to tell us what he sees. What Moores sees could be compared to a geologic highway accident where a string of vehicles reduce order to chaos. Plate tectonics is too simple because it fails to take into account wandering island chains. These are micro-continents with a wanderlust. Moores sees the likelihood of three island chains pranging the West Coast at different times. Each time, instead of being pushed aside by the mass of the North American Plate, they simply attached themselves like limpets. The extra pressure and mass pushed up the High Sierras and the Coast Range. Positioning, erosion and subsidence left the Great Valley, one of the flattest places in the United States, but rich with alluvial soil. The soil produces the world's best wine grapes, and McPhee and Moores justifiably pause in the Sonoma Valley. McPhee moves from Moores' analysis of mountain building to the study of earthquakes and fault lines in the Golden State. Moores' view of California's disorganization is reinforced by the many directions faults take around the state. Garlock, Hayward, White Wolf are names that impinge on the notoriety of San Andreas. San Andreas, for all its fame, is not a fault, but a melange of fault structures, due to those impinging island arcs. McPhee's timing was fortuitous. As he was preparing the text, the earth was preparing a fitting conclusion to his story. In October of 1989 the earth moved and presented "an invoice of six billion dollars for a few moments of shaking." McPhee, like a diarist recording a life, follows the 'quake from its origins through the state. It's more compelling reading than any mystery novel. Wherever you live, you will come away from this book with an enlightened view of what the earth can tell you. And you will seek out more McPhee.
Rating:
Summary: Bravo!
Review: John McPhee is an essayist of significant talent. His ability to parse the technical into terms both enjoyable and understandable is literally striking. Turning a tome on geology into a page-turner must be one heck of a challenge, but McPhee manages to do so with regularity (see also: Rising from the Plains). Assembling California is no different. McPhee starts in the Sierra Nevada with geologist Eldridge Moores and ends on the San Andreas fault during the Loma Prieta quake. Throughout, McPhee explains that California is actually an accretion of exotic terrains that tectonically migrated throughout the eons. I'll admit that on rare occasion some content rendered me a bit glassy eyed, but the majority of the writing was excellent and the San Andreas fault section was beyond outstanding. Taken as a whole, Assembling California is a distinguished finale to McPhee's Interstate 80 geology series that began with Basin and Range and later became a compilation entitled Annals of the Former World.
Rating:
Summary: Bravo!
Review: John McPhee is an essayist of significant talent. His ability to parse the technical into terms both enjoyable and understandable is literally striking. Turning a tome on geology into a page-turner must be one heck of a challenge, but McPhee manages to do so with regularity (see also: Rising from the Plains). Assembling California is no different. McPhee starts in the Sierra Nevada with geologist Eldridge Moores and ends on the San Andreas fault during the Loma Prieta quake. Throughout, McPhee explains that California is actually an accretion of exotic terrains that tectonically migrated throughout the eons. I'll admit that on rare occasion some content rendered me a bit glassy eyed, but the majority of the writing was excellent and the San Andreas fault section was beyond outstanding. Taken as a whole, Assembling California is a distinguished finale to McPhee's Interstate 80 geology series that began with Basin and Range and later became a compilation entitled Annals of the Former World.
Rating: 
Summary: Assembling (Northern) California
Review: My firsthand experience of living in Northern California has endeared me to its fascinating geology, for not too many places on earth have seen so much upheaval: from transform faults to terranes banging against the continent, the uplift of melange complexes from the seafloor, and the splendid manifestation of batholiths that is the Sierra Nevada. A drive from Tahoe to San Francisco takes you across ancient batholiths to the fore-arc basin of the Central Valley and ultimately to the melange and suspect terrane mosaic that is the Coast Ranges, Twin Peaks, and the Marin Headlands. What John McPhee's book successfully delivers is an accessible cross-section of the geology of the golden state at your fingertips, including those, including myself, who wax nostalgic about being a former inhabitant of this geologic wonderland. McPhee explains not only geologic processes but also how geology affected exploration and exploitation of the state's resources. The geology is not dead, for it resonates to this day and to the far future, what with the awesome power yet to be unleashed from California's labyrinthine faults and from the still burgeoning mass of the Cascade volcanoes to the north. Nevertheless, McPhee gives a personal and friendly touch to California's big-time geology.
Rating:
Summary: A cross-section of California at your fingertips.
Review: My firsthand experience of living in Northern California has endeared me to its fascinating geology, for not too many places on earth have seen so much upheaval: from transform faults to terranes banging against the continent, the uplift of melange complexes from the seafloor, and the splendid manifestation of batholiths that is the Sierra Nevada. A drive from Tahoe to San Francisco takes you across ancient batholiths to the fore-arc basin of the Central Valley and ultimately to the melange and suspect terrane mosaic that is the Coast Ranges, Twin Peaks, and the Marin Headlands. What John McPhee's book successfully delivers is an accessible cross-section of the geology of the golden state at your fingertips, including those, including myself, who wax nostalgic about being a former inhabitant of this geologic wonderland. McPhee explains not only geologic processes but also how geology affected exploration and exploitation of the state's resources. The geology is not dead, for it resonates to this day and to the far future, what with the awesome power yet to be unleashed from California's labyrinthine faults and from the still burgeoning mass of the Cascade volcanoes to the north. Nevertheless, McPhee gives a personal and friendly touch to California's big-time geology.
Rating:
Summary: No index, please
Review: The comments of others largely capture the brilliant and compelling writing that makes this book a pleasure to read. I was sorry when I finished it. But please, no index, glossary, or anything else! This is a book for the layman. Even with a glossary, in six months we would forget the precise geological meaning of andesite. What is memorable about this book (and McPhee's other writing on geology) is that the geological terms flow around you and wash over you as if you were an expert in the field. Combined with metaphors that are startlingly original yet perfectly apt, the end result is a glimpse of the depth and possibilities for fascination under the surface story. Mundane details like definitions would make this book dry and boring, just another textbook. Instead, you get the big picture, told in a colorful and informative way, that leaves you educated about geology without feeling like a geologist.
Rating:
Summary: Assembling California : great story, a bit short on graphics
Review: This is a literate, interesting, and in places, a masterful interweaving of gold rush history, a geologist's personal history, and ultimately, the dramatic approach and suturing of continental blocks carried on ocean crust from who knows where in the Pacific, to be docked with coastal California, taking over 200 million years of such collisions to attain its present outline. An admirable job of depicting the formation of key topographic and structural and origins for well known features of northern California. Notably absent were the closely related geology of far northern California and central and southern parts of the state, which have somewhat contrasting histories. Also, there were very few basic definitions, drawings, cross sections, and maps, making this inherently complex story much harder to understand. Especially missed were graphics of the central theme of this work, showing just how this steadily accreting state built up, crustal sliver by sliver, since Jurassic times.
Rating:
Summary: "Lithospheric Driftwood"
Review: This is a very difficult read. Forget it unless you have had at least Geology 101. Or at the very least, read the Roadside Geology of Northerna and Central California first.
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