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Title: Assembling California by John McPhee ISBN: 0-374-52393-2 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.22 (18 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Prose of Rock and Faultlines
Comment: With a precision of language and detail, John McPhee brilliantly evokes the terrain of earthquakes, desert, mountains, and coastline of California. McPhee's guide through the geological history and present-day is Eldridge Moores, a geological professor at UC/Davis who knows the land of California perhaps better than anyone and who can "see through the topography and see how the rocks lie in three dimensions beneath the topography." McPhee is Moores' interpreter, a writer for whom descriptions and metaphor comes as easily as geology does for Moores. Together, they take the reader through the diversity of land formations to form a complex understanding of all the forces that have been at work on this strip of land forming much of the west coast of the United States.
For those only marginally interested in geology and topography, this is a difficult read, though it is well worth sticking with it. I myself read it in chunks, only a single chapter at a time, since any more tested my patience. The writing is superb, however, and the information imparted is both instructional and fascinating. When McPhee writes seemingly simple sentences such as, "There were orchards of carobs, figs, and pistachios, and an understory of prickly pears," he paints an entire countryside in just a few strokes of language. What he does with the drier subject matter of basalt and limestone is extraordinary.
Rating: 4
Summary: The dean of literary non-fiction assembles California
Comment: In Assembling California, John McPhee has once again shown why he has been described as the dean of literary non-fiction. As he unfolds the geologic story of the state, he manages to seamlessly weave two time scales--geologic and human--into a single compelling story. It is a geology text packaged as literature that will leave you thinking "if all geology texts were written like this, I might have majored in geology." Like his earlier books in the series, starting with Rising from the Plains, he has latched onto an expert geologist and followed him across the globe. One difference is that Rising from the Plains was as much a story of the geologist as the geology. In Assembling California, Eldridge Moores serves primarily as the teacher rather than also as a subject. It isn't always an easy read. When terms like syncline, ophiolite, diabase dikes, and subduction zones are flying at you fast and furiously, even readers with technical backgrounds will frequently have to come up for air. The book cries out for two additions: a glossary and an index. In their absence, you are well advised to take detailed notes. Some of the descriptions would also have benefitted from good illustrations. (The few diagrams included illustrate rather basic points.) Overall, however, McPhee does an excellent job of casting light on what is often considered an arcane subject.
Rating: 5
Summary: Bravo!
Comment: 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.
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Title: Basin and Range by John McPhee ISBN: 0374516901 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 1982 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Control of Nature by John McPhee ISBN: 0374522596 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1990 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Rising from the Plains by John McPhee ISBN: 0374520658 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 1987 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: In Suspect Terrain by John McPhee ISBN: 0374517940 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1984 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Annals of the Former World by John McPhee ISBN: 0374518734 Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Pub. Date: 15 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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