The two disparate time scales occasionally intersect -- in the gold disruptions of the nineteenth century no less than in the earthquakes of the twentieth -- and always with relevance to a newly understood geologic history in which half a dozen large and separate pieces of country are seen to have drifted in from far and near to coalesce as California.
McPhee and Moores also journeyed to remote mountains of Arizona (where Moores grew up in a gold-mining camp), and to Cyprus and northern Greece, where rock of the deep-ocean floor has been transported into continental settings, as it has in California. A specialist in such ocean rock and the histories it suggests, Moores routinely works at the applied outer boundary of the theory of plate tectonics, reconstructing ancestral worlds.
Presented here in global dimension is a sweeping narrative of maps in motion, of evolving and dissolving lands. In 1978 and 1979, John McPhee also began his wider series of related journeys, traversing North America at about the fortieth parallel, using roadcuts of interstate 80 as windows into regional geologies, and incidentally profiling the lives of the geologists with whom he travelled.
The two disparate time scales occasionally intersect -- in the gold disruptions of the nineteenth century no less than in the earthquakes of the twentieth -- and always with relevance to a newly understood geologic history in which half a dozen large and separate pieces of country are seen to have drifted in from far and near to coalesce as California.
McPhee and Moores also journeyed to remote mountains of Arizona (where Moores grew up in a gold-mining camp), and to Cyprus and northern Greece, where rock of the deep-ocean floor has been transported into continental settings, as it has in California. A specialist in such ocean rock and the histories it suggests, Moores routinely works at the applied outer boundary of the theory of plate tectonics, reconstructing ancestral worlds.
Presented here in global dimension is a sweeping narrative of maps in motion, of evolving and dissolving lands. In 1978 and 1979, John McPhee also began his wider series of related journeys, traversing North America at about the fortieth parallel, using roadcuts of interstate 80 as windows into regional geologies, and incidentally profiling the lives of the geologists with whom he travelled.
Imprint | Farrar Straus Giroux |
Country of origin | United States |
Release date | July 2002 |
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Authors | John McPhee |
Format | Electronic book text |
ISBN-13 | 978-0-374-70365-3 |
Barcode | 9780374703653 |
Categories | |
LSN | 0-374-70365-5 |