( 4 reviews )
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( 3 of 4 found this review helpful ) Posted: Aug 29 2002
Steven Harris taken what might be thought of as pretty boring "science" stuff and written an exciting book about how unstable our stable, or at least what we percieve as stable, world can be. Students of geology might find some of this stuff "old hat" and Harris, rightly so, has targeted his book to the layman. Focusing on the western United States, he presents a look at natural catastrophies from a geologic standpoint that have happened (focusing on recent geological past events) and how these events could (and eventually will) create chaos to us more recent earth residents. Many readers are probably familiar with the major earthquake danger in California; however, I venture that most are unaware of the types of volcanic dangers presented in this book (and you thought the only real dangers in Yellowstone National Park were bears and RVs). My only complaints have to do with a lack of good editing. Drawing on such a large bibliography of peer-reviewed scientific literature, one wishes that Harris would have borrowed more of the rigorious editing that is a staple of the science. The chapters of the book read somewhat like individual articles with repetition of some facts (almost verbatum) in almost every chapter (no real "flow" from chapter to chapter). Ditto some of the illustrations. Several of the maps were presented without scales and captions on some illustrations were confusing. With a good re-edit my rating would be 4-stars.
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( 3 of 3 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jan 8 2002
This highly informative book tends to undermine one's preconceptions of slow geologic processes. It turns out, that geologic change may also proceed quite quickly. Fun to read.Mountain Press of Missoula publishes so many fine geology books (including the Roadside Geology series). However, this particular book of Stephen Harris raises exciting theoretical considerations.If you like volcanoes, you must own this book; I am not giving you a choice.
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( 3 of 5 found this review helpful ) Posted: Feb 20 2001
I may not be majoring in geology, but I found this book to be an excellant read. I was suprised by some of the information that was presented in this book.
