“Essentials of Geology“, written by Frederick K. Lutgens and Edward J. Tarbuck, published by Pearson in January 2017 (paperback, 608 pages)

The task of picking a textbook sounds simpler than it is. Many major academic publishers publish their own undergraduate earth science textbooks. So do you pick Oxford’s Physical Geology Today, Wiley’s Physical Geology: The Science of Earth, or rather Norton’s Essentials of Geology? As I have only read this textbook, this review will unfortunately not help you decide. So, why did I choose Pearson’s Essentials of Geology?

Frederick K. Lutgens and Edward J. Tarbuck are both emeritus professors, so should know the field well, and with the book now in its 13th edition, I figured there has been plenty of opportunity to revise the book in response to feedback from instructors and students. Other reasons were more prosaic: the title sounded just what a geology-newbie like myself would need, and it seemed the book was available in hardback (alas, that was not the case, some databases and retailers are not displaying the right information). Comparing with other textbooks though, it seems that the core material being taught is very similar across these books. If, like me, you are not assigned a textbook by a course instructor, one could legitimately ask whether it even matters which book you pick.

Starting with plate tectonics, which has become the basis on which geology rests nowadays (see also my review of The Tectonic Plates are Moving!), Essentials of Geology takes you through all the important topics and gives you the basics on minerals, the different types of rock, the dynamics of Earth (volcanoes, earthquakes, mountain building, and ocean crust formation), as well as weathering of rocks, desert formation, and landslides (pardon me, mass movement). The hydro- and cryosphere also get attention in a series of chapters dealing with running water, groundwater, glaciers, and shorelines. Finally, there are chapters dealing with geologic time and earth’s evolution, and, required nowadays, global climate change.

“videos accessible via QR codes […] seem like a gimmick, but really are not”

This book is very accessibly written and has all the trappings you have come to expect of an undergraduate textbook: chapters opening with a list of learning goals, questions at the end of each section, and, at chapter’s end, a point-wise summary and a list of assignments. To make sure students remain engaged there are “Did you Know?” sections sprinkled throughout the text, and a huge number of full-colour illustrations and photos. Especially the artwork of Dennis Tasa deserves mention.

Like many modern textbooks, Pearson has an online platform called MasteringGeology that I have not explored yet. It is supposed to give instructors the option to assign interactive media and reading before a class, allow the use of laptops or tablets during classes to assign questions, and hand out assignments after the class. There are also outlines of PowerPoint lectures, test banks, and other teaching resources.

One feature that not all above-mentioned textbooks have is videos accessible via QR codes. If you are a techno-Luddite like myself without a smartphone to scan these, not to worry, each figure also has a shortened URL to access these. This may seem like a gimmick, but having watched them, they really are not. The majority are so-called SmartFigures where contributor Callan Bentley talks you through some of the book’s drawings while annotating them (an example here – don’t you just love how publishers use random capitalisation to spice things up?) His voice is pleasant enough but I felt that these did not always add that much. If you want information explained to you in a different way they will be helpful. Far more impressive and really adding something are the Mobile Field Trips, where contributor Michael Collier takes you into the field in his Cessna aeroplane (an example here), and the use of drones to show you field footage of geological formations (an example here). There are also some proper animations, as well as videos provided by NASA. I admit that I found these clips and animations surprisingly useful.

“[…] despite being a core text, the authors do not present the field as a dogmatic monolith of knowledge”

Something to keep in mind is that the book is quite US-centric, using many examples of geological structures and landscapes found in the USA. Mercifully, the book uses metric units, mentioning imperial units in brackets, though it is not 100% consistent throughout, mentioning imperial units only in “Did you Know?” sidebars and some questions. My biggest gripe, something true of most textbooks, is the floppy paperback format and thin paper used. This book will not stand up on a shelf on its own and is very prone to dog ears and creased pages. I understand that publishers are trying to save weight while producing a book that lies open flat during lectures, but it is hard not to feel they have built in obsolescence by producing books that will last just a semester before being tossed out for the next obligatory edition.

Having worked my way through the book I feel I learned a lot. There were some nice a-ha moments (such as the insight that sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rocks are on a continuum determined by temperature and pressure) and it clarified the jargon for me. I also appreciated that, despite being a core text, the authors do not present the field as a dogmatic monolith of knowledge. Where scientists disagree and multiple explanations have their own adherents, this is mentioned (examples include the debate over mantle plumes, see Plates vs Plumes: A Geological Controversy, or the different models to explain the formation of desert pavement). Similarly, the book feels up-to-date by acknowledging how many scientists think that the extinction of the dinosaurs was a one-two knockout of Deccan volcanism and a meteorite impact (see my review of The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans and Our Quest to Understand Earth’s Past Mass Extinctions), or that ancient DNA is showing we interbred with Neanderthals.

Essentials of Geology does what it says on the tin and does so very well. I feel far more confident now to tackle more advanced textbooks (see my review of CUP’s Structural Geology, but I am also salivating over Large Igneous Provinces, Mid-Ocean Ridges, and Orogenesis: The Making Of Mountains). Though I can not say how it holds up in comparison to other textbooks, I can at least say that if you want to get started learning more about geology this is a very good starting point that offers a lot of bonus material other than the book.

Essentials of Geology (13th edition) paperback

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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“The Edge of Memory: Ancient Stories, Oral Tradition and the Post-Glacial World“, written by Patrick Nunn, published by Bloomsbury Sigma (a Bloomsbury Publishing imprint)  in August 2018 (hardback, 288 pages)

The term geomythology was originally coined by Dorothy Vitaliano in 1968 and described in her 1973 book Legends of the Earth: Their Geologic Origins. It remains a small but thriving research community with, for example, an edited collection, Myth and Geology, on the topic in 2007. With The Edge of Memory, Nunn focuses specifically on Australian Aboriginal stories that have been told for millennia and never written down. He presents 21 of them here, collected from around the continent. Many speak of floods and submergence, and Nunn neatly links this to the changing climate over the last ten thousand years. As we came out of the last Ice Age, sea levels rose, which Nunn thinks is what storytellers describe in these myths. Obviously, observing their world through a different lens than we do nowadays, such changes were interpreted as signs of angry or playful gods, rather than climatic phenomena or natural disasters.

Nunn’s writing is great, and he does a superb job when explaining the finer points of the geology involved in sea level rises and melting ice sheets. For example, I have yet to come across a clearer description of isostatic rebound (i.e. the rising of land when it has been unburdened from heavy ice sheets). The idea of legends and myths (including the above-mentioned Biblical flood) referring to past events is fascinating. Nunn thinks that we are unjustly denigrating oral stories, choosing to only trust the written word. Let us not forget, he says, that knowledge has been passed down generations in spoken form for most of our history – writing is a relatively recent invention in the grand scheme of things.

“[…] ancient stories and myths record within them descriptions of geological catastrophes and climatic changes. Welcome to the obscure academic discipline of geomythology.”

Fair enough, but I think it is more than justified to retain some healthy scepticism here. Writing has allowed us to pass far more and more detailed information down the generations. And, I would argue, it has been a very important contributing, if not decisive, factor in allowing technology and science to bloom. The spoken word, and especially human memory are notoriously unreliable, and people are prone to embellish memories and selectively forget and remember. Given that you are interpreting stories told in a different language, by people of a different culture, formed at a time when these people’s forebears lacked our understanding of the world, and passed down the generations like a game of Chinese whispers, means you have to make quite a few assumptions and informed guesses. I imagine opinions on how best to interpret stories will vary widely. To me it seems that, at best, this method allows you to identify interesting leads that would need corroborating with palaeoclimatological data, but I’m not sure you will ever be able to confidently say “these stories describe this particular change in the climate”. Luckily, Nunn is more than willing to admit these limitations and is sufficiently cautious in presenting his findings. And he shows how Aboriginals have sophisticated methods of cross-checking their stories to ensure fidelity in transmission.

Besides the traditional Australian stories, Nunn takes a quick look at a few other cultures in Europe and India that record stories hinting at rising sea levels. But it is not just flooding. He discusses a range of myths that hint at past volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, meteor strikes, landslides, the rapid disappearance of islands (see Nunn’s 2009 book Vanished Islands and Hidden Continents of the Pacific), or even extinct animals.

For the purpose of this book, he has ignored more recent events that have been well documented in, well, writing, such as the eruptions of Krakatoa (see Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded), Laki (see Island on Fire: The Extraordinary Story of Laki, the Volcano that Turned Eighteenth-Century Europe Dark), or Tambora (see Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World). In one of this footnotes he mentions the Toba supereruption, though he does not subscribe to the idea that it caused a genetic bottleneck for humans (more on this in my review of Prothero’s new book When Humans Nearly Vanished: The Catastrophic Explosion of the Toba Volcano), and anyway, this seems too far back in time to have been carried down the ages in stories.

“And what of Atlantis? […] Despite it being a literary device invented by Plato rather than a real place this has not stopped people from looking for it”

And what of the legend of Atlantis? Perfect example of why we need to remain sceptic. As Nunn also points out, despite it being a literary device invented by Plato rather than a real place (see for example The Atlantis Story: A Short History of Plato’s Myth and The Search for Atlantis: A History of Plato’s Ideal State), this has not stopped people from looking for it and assigning geological features to this legend (one of the more serious books on this topic is The Lost Empire of Atlantis: History’s Greatest Mystery Revealed).

The Edge of Memory has several helpful maps, though their reproduction suffers a bit. Some of them use light grey areas to show ancient coastlines, but the colours are so light they are hard to discern in some maps. The colour plate section, on the other hand, features some striking photos and illustrations.

As also shown by my review of The First Domestication: How Wolves and Humans Coevolved, we ignore traditional knowledge at our own peril. I maintain that healthy scepticism is warranted when interpreting them, but I have to agree with Nunn that this should not make us discard these stories outright. They have the potential to push back our collective memory by thousands of years, and coupling them to modern scientific findings will no doubt yield many more fascinating findings in the years ahead. With its heavy focus on Aboriginal stories (Nunn’s current study subject), The Edge of Memory is not intended as an authoritative overview of the whole discipline of geomythology. Nevertheless, he successfully champions this interesting academic discipline and provides a compulsively readable introduction.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

The Edge of Memory hardback, paperback, ebook, audiobook or MP3 CD

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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“Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization”, written by Brian Fagan, published by Yale University Press in November 2017 (hardback, 346 pages)

Fishing undoubtedly started off as opportunistic food gathering. Fagan imagines our forebears catching catfish marooned in drying pools. Shellfish were similarly easily exploited, and our ancestors have left clear traces of this in the form of enormous piles of discarded shells – so-called middens – that built up over centuries. It is not uncommon for such piles to be metres deep. But besides middens, traces of fishing in the archaeological record are scarce. There are several reasons for this; the tools of the trade (nets, ropes, rafts, and traps) decay easily and are rarely found, fish bones are small and only recovered by thorough excavation techniques that sieve sediments, and the story of humanity played out on shorelines that have since disappeared underwater as sea levels rose over the course of many millennia.

Fishing plays out in three acts. First, Fagan explores the earliest history of fishing as humanity fished at a subsistence level. In eleven chapters, each with helpful maps, he takes us out of Africa, along the coastlines of Asia, over the Bering land bridge between Russia and Alaska, and down the coast of North and South America. Further chapters explore archaeological evidence for fishing in Europe, South-east Asia, Japan, and the multitude of islands dotting the Pacific ocean. I found the story of fishing for sturgeon in the Danube river and the crossing of the Bering landbridge fascinating to read.

“I found the story of fishing for sturgeon in the Danube river and the crossing of the Bering landbridge fascinating to read.”

The second act chronicles the rise of agriculture. I recently reviewed Scott’s Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, which highlighted the importance of grains. But Fagan adds another facet to this story. With stratified societies now coming into existence, fishing changed from a means of subsistence to a trade. Through collaboration and new tools, fishermen increased their efforts and started to catch surplus fish to sell on. Fagan looks at fishing practices in ancient Egypt, Greece, and the Roman empire, and goes into the various techniques for preserving fish so it can be transported as a commodity. As an aside, the Romans had a taste for a rather fishy sauce called garum which was made from fermented fish blood and entrails, served in a briny liquid. Fagan also explores fishing practices in the Red Sea, around the Arabian peninsula, the East African coast, and the coastline of India. He builds a very believable case that coastal villages of fishermen were vital waystations in the early days of seafaring, providing much-needed replenishments and trade posts as naval trading routes started to develop along these coastlines.

The third act looks at further increases in fishing efforts following the fall of the Roman empire and the rise and rise of Christianity (and with it a huge number of meat-free, but not fish-free, holy days). Concerns about overfishing were raised as early as the beginning of the 1500s when various European nations starting exploiting stocks of cod in the Atlantic and off the coast of Newfoundland. Having reviewed All the Boats on the Ocean: How Government Subsidies Led to Global Overfishing last year, the last stretch of the story, looking at global overfishing in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, was familiar territory. It was when Fagan casually summarised in a few pages what Finley made the subject of a whole book, that I realised the sheer scope of this work. Each of these chapters could easily be a book-length treatment of its own (another example is the forthcoming The Fishmeal Revolution: The Industrialization of the Humboldt Current Ecosystem on the development of the fisheries off the Peru-Chile coast, which Fagan also covers here shortly).

Fishing is thus a tour de force. As far as I can tell, no one has previously attempted to give such a broad, global overview of fishing. I admit that I occasionally found my attention flagging, but that has nothing to do with Fagan’s writing style. It is more that the book is rich in archaeological and anthropological detail, which are topics I am less familiar with, and under normal circumstances perhaps also less fascinated by. However, Fagan provides so many interesting stories that he managed to draw me back in time and again. He also excels at that most difficult of traits for any writer: leaving things out. I am sure Fagan is sitting on enough material to write a book double or triple this size. Instead, he masterfully condenses his material in short, crisp chapters that never exceed fifteen pages. And, being the senior scientist he has become, he delivers his story in a calm and reasoned way, pointing out where the evidence for certain interpretations is speculative, and where it is solid. History and archaeology readers will find much in this book to enjoy, but so will inquisitive readers of other disciplines. It certainly achieves its goal of putting fishing on par with hunter-gathering and agriculture in the history of human civilization.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Fishing paperback, hardback, ebook, audiobook or audio CD

Other recommended books mentioned in this review: