In Suspect Terrain

More John McPhee to be listed soon…
First Edition.
Anita G. Harris grew up in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn and frankly went into geology in order to get out of the city.
She has developed an international reputation, mainly as a result of paleontological discoveries that have enhanced the search for oil. She works for the United States Geological Survey, and she happens to be to put it mildly-cool toward a number of aspects of the theory of plate tectonics.
In Suspect Terrain like John McPhee’s previous book, Basin and Range—is a composite of journeys through ancient terrains, always in juxtaposition with travels in the modern world. What Geotimes said of Basin and Range might be said of this book as well: “Geologists will find it sound, others will find it understandable and illuminating.” On and off Interstate 80, McPhee traveled with Anita Harris from the New Jersey Highlands to the Indiana Dunes. In the context of Appalachian history-among mountains which are thought by many to represent the suturing of two continents— her cautionary remarks about plate theory are given unrestrained expression. In counterpoint is her expertise in bygone continental glaciation, which was first assembled as theory about thirteen decades before plate tectonics and is abundantly exemplified almost everywhere along the route followed.
From the outwash plains of Brooklyn to Indiana’s drifted diamonds and gold, the narrative moves across the Eastern continent, and attempts to demonstrate that the front edge of a science is never smooth. It digresses into minor set pieces on oil and coal. It incorporates near the outset an extensive profile of Anita Harris and the geology of New York City. It dwells long upon the deep and human history of one small fragment of the Appalachian system as an opening to an understanding of the whole – translating from rock and topography the annals of the former world. As Stephen Jay Gould wrote of Basin and Range in The New York Review of Books, McPhee “triumphs by succinct prose, by his uncanny ability to capture the essence of a complex issue, or an arcane trade secret, in a well-turned phrase.”