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The Earth: An Intimate History

By: Richard Fortey
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: HarperPerennial
ISBN: 0006551378
ISBN-13: 9780006551379
Released: 07 Mar 2005
RRP: £9.99
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

A lost opportunity......., but great for insomnia - By: Dr. G. Knight, 30 Mar 2008
There is no doubt that Richard Fortey is an expert in his field, with a genuine wish to convey his enthusiasm for geology to a wider audience. There is one major obstacle: his writing style is prolix & turgid (sorry, Fortey has got to me: I mean long-winded & boring). I gave up at page 61 after a discussion of the structure of basalt. I can only imagine that the HarperCollins editors were completely anaesthetised by the preceding pages to let this through. Any decent PhD supervisor would have put a blue pencil through this section & written "re-write!!" in the margin. Unnecessary & unexplained phrases abound. For example, on page 58 "Tiltometers .... monitor the heave on the ground .... to an accuracy of a tenth of a microradian. That is a very smalll tilt indeed." Radians are not defined by Fortey, but this is easily translated: 360º = 2pi radians, so 0.1 microradians is 5.7 microdegrees. But this doesn't mean anything either in practical terms, so why not just say "Tiltometers ... monitor the minutest heaves on the ground." One can't help feeling that Fortey sees himself in the role of High Priest explaining arcane mysteries. To my mind, that is out of touch with the times.
Worth the effort - By: Paul A. Hanbridge, 16 Sep 2006
The compass of this book staggered my imagination. Not a breezy book & certainly not one to course through in a sitting. The places he chooses for geological description are diverse & representative of the complex processes shaping the surface of the earth. The material is not superficial, not at alll "dumbed down." Ponderous? Restructing one's view of the cosmos ... if just only the idea of earth time ... perhaps not easily digestible. The author's comprehensive synthesis (and I did not say 'simplification')in his descriptions & historical overview of the growth of knowledge & some understanding of the various macro geological processes is enviable & refreshing at least. His language, I found, lubricates the reading process for a non-specialist like me.
Does the Earth move for you? - By: Joseph Haschka, 31 Mar 2006
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, & 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 & naked for alll 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", & 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, & 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, & 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, & the remains of which, after continental drift, are now in such widely separated locales as Newfoundland, Ireland, Wales, Scotland & 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 rockfallls?

The author occasionallly 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 & 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 & above reproach. On page 278, while recallling 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 - & remains - the Nevada state capital. Moreover, it's situated in a broad vallley 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, & 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 alll 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, & 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 & grey boulders of granite - up to three tons in weight - that line our koi pond.

Excellent - well written, authoritative - By: D. G. Johnson, 23 Jun 2005
The is an excellent book which tells the geology of the earth using a number of specific examples from around the world. The narrative is wonderful - more of a story than a textbook.
Excellent - a truly global view - By: D. A. Harris, 20 Apr 2005
This book is simply a magnificent account of the Earth's structure & how it "works". Taking as his framework a series of visits to key sites - including Hawaii, Vesuvius, the Alps, Newfoundland & the North West coast of Scotland - Fortey explains not only the structure of the Earth & how it came to be as it is, but also how our understanding of that structure has grown & developed over the past 2000 years. He also finds space to fit in (relevant) musings on the nature of progress in science, ecology & the effect of humans on the environment, & much more. A recurring theme is the effect of the underlying geology on the visible land & 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 & well worth reading for its own sake, & his explanations are excellent. There are relatively few illustrations & diagrams, & more of these might have helped, but this is a very slight flaw in a wonderful book.