5 comments about Laboratory Manual in Physical Geology (6th Edition).

1. Publishers are driving me nuts with their inflated prices...they made a small number of edition #6 which was considered their best one and then let their supplies run out so that schools would have to buy their "new" one. After flipping through it, it is clear that it is nearly identical to the sixth edition lab manual. Such a waste.



2. I bought this book for school, since my school was out of the book and this one was cheaper. It does the job, it is probably less expensive than your school, and you can't get a used one because usually some of the pages you need are missing.



3. This "lab manual" is VERY thick and far too wordy. Really, it's more of a spiral-bound textbook than a lab manual. Additionally, the lab questions appear in list format at the end of each section, so there is virtually no standardized answersheet for students to record their work on. That not only makes it harder on the students, but efficient grading is nearly impossible unless the instructor makes his/her own taylor-made answer sheets for the students to use on EACH lab. As if that weren't bad enough, the lab manual's companion web site is horrid. I am amazed that the AGI and the NAGT produced this lab manual.



4. I inherited this lab manual when I started teaching physical geology this semester, and I told my students to return it to the bookstore. It contains factual errors (such as referring to hornblende and other non-metallic minerals as metallic, which they are not - metallic minerals are opaque in thin section), and the pedagogy is highly questionable. In the rock and mineral sections, it relies too heavily on photographs. Students already have a tendency to want to simply match minerals and rocks to pictures, which doesn't work, and this book encourages this. The book is too much talk and not enough action. Students in a lab should be guided to work with objects, not to simply answer questions out of a book. There is too much explanation provided, with little left for students to figure out on their own. Labs should be presented to students as mysteries to be solved, and this book takes all the mystery out of everything.



5. I was concerned because this book was used & included a CD. It was in very good shape and the CD was unopened. Thank you!

2 comments about The Mechanics of Earthquakes and Faulting (2nd Edition).

1. Christopher Scholz has written a welcome update to the classic 1990 edition of his book, and if you thought that Crustal Deformation was a field where nothing exciting happens, think again! Substantial chunks of the book have been re-written and re-organized to bring the text bang up-to-date with the cutting edge of tectonics and rock mechanics research.
   The beauty of this book is that Scholz, along with his students and research associates, basically has been the cutting edge of research in this field for the past 30 years. The book therefore reads as a guide to the evolution of ideas and a personal memoir of scientific exploration, while allowing the reader to follow the same thought processes, and more fully understand what we currently think regarding these subjects.
   The text is a monograph, quite different from the usual condescending tone found in textbooks, and can be understood and appreciated by readers of widely differing abilities, from interested laymen to fellow researchers. Thorough explanations are given for each topic, with examples taken from actual scientific papers, putting the reader in touch with the original papers, a glaring omission in many other textbooks. The language is never more complicated than it needs to be, and Scholz's straight-forward explanations and no-nonsense style make comprehension almost too easy, leaving the reader a real feeling that one has learned something at the end, which will come as a breath of fresh air to any student that has suffered through a horribly dull and irrelevent lecture, only to remain scratching their head at the end.
   The book is a tribute to the intellect and longeivity of the man's career, blessed as he is with a happy knack for being proven "right" by the passing of time, and continuing accumulation of research results. A classic text, and again, a must-read for anyone with a desire to know more about the planet we live on.



2. Prof. Scholz of Columbia summarizes the science of rock mechanics.
   
   This book is the easiest way to gain a first foothold in the physics of how faults behave. In fact, as far as I know, it may be the only way, short of attempting a PhD in geophysics. I've read it (and hope I remember at least a fraction of its contents), used it in class, and even given away a copy or two to students.
   
   If only more scientists could write as well. As a side light, Chris has also written a book for the general reader on the excitement of discovering the tectonics of Africa, Fieldwork: A Geologist's Memoir of the Kalahari, which I highly recommend.

5 comments about Supercontinent: Ten Billion Years in the Life of Our Planet.

1. Based on the subtitle of this book, I was expecting details on the changes in the earth's crust/continents over the last 10 billion years -- a very interesting survey that would be! However, the author begins with a parable on what an alien visitor would see from outer space, suitable for teenage readers, after which the bulk of the book is a survey of the history of plate tectonics. This survey focuses on the individuals involved, jumping back and forth between them, and offers little real information. It is not particularly scientific but would instead be a history of the research, with bios of the scientists/philosophers. I ended up skimming in order to find the kind of info I was looking for. Also, to note, the illustrations don't have captions, so you aren't entirely sure what you are looking at or where/why it applies to the text.



2. "Did the Earth move for you?", asks the voice beside you. Well, yes. Because that's what it does. All the time. The continent you live on used to be someplace else, and far away from where it is now. Your home ground has even been part of a greater landmass known as a "supercontinent" - and will be again. Hence, the title of this book. Ted Nield provides us with a fine account of how we came to learn about these movements. He has brought together the years of research tracking where the rocks have been and where they are likely to go. He likens the movement of continents to a dance of landforms - a "Grand Quadrille". A fine synopsis of the history of geology and its compelling figures - scholars who had to project what was known in their time back into a distant past.
   
   Earth has been a busy place for the past four billion years, and it hasn't stopped to rest. We speak of the "firmness of the Earth", but that phrase is a sham. The key figure in this story is the great supercontinent of Pangaea that began breaking up 250 million years ago. Assembled from previous continents that had once joined and also separated, Pangaea's breakup into places we live on today have been traced in exquisite detail. The matching of rocks in places separated by wide seas provided the clues. In fact, as Nield relates, it was the vast Atlantic that bears the responsibility for Pangaea's fracturing to form the basis for the continents we know today. The author explains how the continents have been engaging in a Grand Quadrille and will continue to do so - for another five billion years, at least.
   
   The progenitor of the idea of "drifting continents" was Alfred Wegener. Using maps to show how western Eurasia and Africa matched the east coasts of the Western Hemisphere, Wegener proposed they had once been joined, but had pulled apart. He couldn't provide a mechanism for the movement, and his idea was rejected - most notably by the geologic "establishment" of the United States. Rejection of the proposal was so strong there that one British geologist described it as "regarding the Declaration of Independence as retroactive to the Palaeozoic". Continents formed separately and remained so through time, it was thought.
   
   However, one US dissident, Reginald Daly of Harvard, had been in South Africa, encountering the work of Alexander du Toit, who noted similarities in rocks of the Great Karoo and South America. That discovery, enhanced by some detailed measurements in Greenland, suggested that movement was occurring. It took a war and the hunt for submarines to reveal what prompted continental movement. An Irish geophysicist, John Joly had already postulated the mechanism, heat from radioactive elements deep in the Earth required escape. That venting pushed the softer areas in the Earth's crust around. Sitting atop that stirring material, the continents track the flow patterns of the heat.
   
   In moving, the continents encounter each other, joining, fusing and establishing mighty landmasses that break up again. Nield skilfully describes the mechanisms and the people who have read the rocks to understand how they work. Beyond Pangaea, for example, the author cites the work of Mark McMenamin, who proposes a yet older supercontinent, Rodinia. Rodinia's importance in the history of the Earth is that it was probably the extant landform around which complex life, after over 3 billion years, finally emerged. Nield's skill in presenting all these complex ideas and their significance never wanes throughout the book. He's achieved a fine summary of the history of modern geology, supported by a collection of portraits and some line drawings. The emphasis on Pangaea is slightly overdone, but his pointer to Chris Scotese's web page of geologic ages more than overcomes that small limitation. An excellent overview. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]



3. This book tackles the great subject of the geologic history of the Earth from the vantage point of plate tectonics. Along the way, the author writes compellingly of the origins and development of life and the history of our atmosphere. He also gets side-tracked in biographies of some key geologists in the Continental Drift controversy as well as a light-hearted discussion of fictitious 'Lost Continents'. Luckily the book is organized in such a way that these digressions can be skipped if desired. My main objection in this book is the lack of good and relevent illustrations and maps. At the very least, a detailed stratigraphic chart relating geologic periods to continent-building and other events would be helpful. Also, maps detailing the assembly and disassembly of the supercontinents would greatly enhance his narrative of these events.
   
   In many ways this is a wonderful and informative work. Paradoxically, it is not an easy read in the most interesting sections but it is well worth the effort.



4. It's interesting in a sense that if it had been someone other than Neild writing this book, I probably would have given it five stars. As it is however, the presentation of the subject matter is at times vague and at other times condascending. Science is always evolving as new ideas are put forward and old ones become obselete. As such, there's no need to criticize old ideas, even if they've been rendered null and void.
   
   The science is still good though, so I'd recomend picking this book up.



5. In this remarkable book, the author touches upon just about everything regarding long lost continents: how the idea of a supercontinent came about, ancient and not-so-ancient myths (Atlantis, Lemuria, Mu), why continents cannot simply sink, highlights in the lives of some of the individuals involved and, in particular, the fascinating science. After discussing how the existing continents are moving relative to each other (continental drift) and how they will likely collide in the distant future, thus forming another supercontinent, he discuses the supercontinents of the past. In so doing, the reader is treated to a history of the earth and how it works, brimming throughout with scientific facts, principles as well as theories and the evidence that supports them. The scientific processes involved and the dating techniques that are used by scientists are particularly well explained; this is not surprising given the author's credentials. The writing style is clear, elegant, authoritative, often witty and always quite engaging. As a result, this is a book that can be enjoyed by anyone, although science/geology buffs may be the ones that would savor it the most.

No comments about Seawater, Second Edition: Its Composition, Properties and Behaviour.

No comments about Introduction to Planetary Science: The Geological Perspective.

2 comments about Looking into the Earth: An Introduction to Geological Geophysics.

1. prior to reading this book, i had already taken a more difficult , engineering-oriented Digital Signal Processing class (groundwork for Geophysics) so I had a good background it in.
   
   this book attempts to dummy down DSP concepts for the laymen (or layscientists) but fails in doing so. half of the ideas are well articulated, but the other-half are written poorly (confusingly or expounded insufficiently) or are illustrated poorly.
   
   i imagined that if i had no background in dsp or engineering--the target of this book--i would have found it very frustrating.
   
   since this is a textbook, most of the readers will have no choice in book selection, anyways, so tough luck :)



2. Chapters 8 and 9 really make this book worth while. Although some might call the simplification of complex geophysical ideas in this book "dumbing down" (is dumbing even a word?), but I have found it to be a valuable way to introduce introcate theory. I've read so much literature on gravity and isostacy and this book is the only one to lay the theory out simply and clearly. Truely a good reference to have on the shelf for all of us non-genius geophysicists.
   
   I don't have a class that requires this text, however, I've stolen it from my advisor enough that I think it's time to buy it.

2 comments about Fundamentals of Geophysics.

1. This book is what its title says "FUNDAMENTALS", I think it's a pre-basic book about Geophysics. There are other books better than this one, i.e. Telford's "Applied Geophysics" and Garland's "Introduction to Geophysics" (this is what Mr. Lowrie says).



2. I tried to use this book as an "updated" textbook for an introductory course on Physics of the Earth (second year geophysics major) I had to taught. Since my area of research is paleomagnetism and rock magnetism the name of William Lowrie was sort of a guarantee that the book would be good. However, in the middle of the term I had to switch back to the "great classics", namely Stacey's and Garland's books. There are several problems with this book, firstly most of the formulae are presented out of the blues without a comprehensive deduction. That is not the most serious problem though, I also found several mistakes in the 2000 edition (I do not know if further editions took care of these problems). Some of these mistakes are pretty serious. As an example: he states that the international formula for the gravity normal to the Earth's ellipsoid derives directly from MacCullah's formula. That is not correct since in MacCullah's formula the centrifugal term coming from Earth's rotation is not considered!!!! There are also lots of minor mistakes related to missing terms in several formulae and derivatives. I did not touch the chapters related to geomagnetism and rock magnetism but I gather they should be the best in the whole book (I really hope so!!!!) since that is precisely William Lowrie's field of research. However I would not recommend this book at all.

5 comments about Earthquakes, Fifth Edition.

1. I spent a lot of time searching for a book explaining earthquakes that wasn't too simple or a text book. Bolt's book is more toward the textbook end of the scale, but is still quite readable. This is not a simple "what to do" book but an explanation of how quakes happen, how they cause damage, what we can do, etc.



2. The new 4th edition has a new chapter on Plate Tectonics,recent earthquake descriptions,connections with Web pages,and colored illustrative plates.Fresh historical text has been included and more help with seismic safety.



3. This book provides a very good coverage on Earthquakes, from how and why they happen to their effects and safety concerns. You can learn about faults, plates, how earthquakes are sized, how much can be forecasted, how structures are affected, ground acceleration, soil conditions, etc. Though there are numerous examples from California, this is not one of those books which try to provide earthquake checklists to Californians. The level of technicality is one reason I recommend the book. You don't have to be a seismologist to understand the book, but you won't get bored if you are technically oriented. You will get a quantitative feel of concepts in addition to the clear explanations.



4. Well, the title says it -- I'm keeping my copy of the 3rd edition because the illos in the latest edition look soft and disturbingly unsharp. Maybe the publisher, having lost the original artwork for the 3rd edition, simply scanned a copy. Or maybe the quality got skimped when the work was made all-electronic. I don't know.

   In any case, the content is fine.




5. "Earthquakes" by Bruce Bolt has been the classic textbook for many years for a non-technical discussion. The fifith edition properly orders the material, and tosses out some outdated material, on earthquake prediction and reservoir-induced seismicity, for example.
   
   It is fairly clear, contains colorful stories from Bruce's decades as Director of the Berkeley Seismological Station, and has a firm scientific grounding. Reading it is no walk in the park, as befits a subject of moderate complexity, but neither is it a dark and stormy night. The accompanying web notes are sketchy, and I just noted some stale links.
   
   This book is California-centric, Bob Yeats has a more Pacific Northwest-centric "Living with earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest", Brumbaugh's "Earthquakes - Science and Society" is more rudimentary in both graphics and prose, and Yanev's "Peace of mind in earthquake country" is more engineering oriented and has been out of print. Susan Hough's "Earthshaking Science" is better written but with far fewer graphics.
   
   Reading this book remains the easiest way to understand earthquakes.

5 comments about Introduction to Seismology.

1. I took a quarter long course in seismology and this book fit the bill perfectly. Even though are class was not based solely on this book, I felt it added a great deal more to my enjoyment of the class. This is a great pre-graduate course book for an eye-opening look into seismology.



2. By going through the textbook and doing selected exercises one can complete the equivalent of a quarter-long seismology class. Well written and accessible to a wide range of interest levels and mathematical abilities, this book is excellent for anyone with a desire to learn about seismology at a quantitative level.



3. I just finished an intro to seismology course, and this was the textbook for it. It is easy to read and understand, covers most topics well, and is generally a good introductory textbook. It does, however, lack depth. Often I'd finish a chapter and still have a lot of questions on how, exactly, I could apply what I'd learned to a problem. I found this frustrating.



4. I really like this little book! The layout is great (no clutter) and easy to read. The font is adequate, the equations clear and the tone relaxed. While it isn't as in depth as most other books on this subject, it makes for a handy reference. It is a broad overview of the fundamentals of earthquake seismology. I find that it explains some of the more rigorous subject matter in an easier to understand way. If you're not understanding a subject very well in say, the book: "Quantitative Seismology", just refer to this little gem and wala...it's like a lightbulb coming on. I particularly like the section on source theory. It's like a breath of fresh air. I can't say enough about how accessible this book is. I recommend it highly.



5. This textbook is very good. The author emphasizes on the mathematical taste in the description of seismic and geologic features. If you look at things on a mathematical perspective, this is the on you must have in your "library".

No comments about Seismic Stratigraphy, Basin Analysis and Reservoir Characterisation, Volume 37 (Handbook of Geophysical Exploration: Seismic Exploration).