front cover of Clarence Edward Dutton
Clarence Edward Dutton
An Appraisal
Stegner, Wallace
University of Utah Press, 2006
"A finger smashed in a car door and a missed geology examination at the University of Utah led Wallace Stegner to a special assignment about Clarence E. Dutton, thence to John Wesley Powell, and finally in 1954 to publication of what is arguably the single best nonfiction book dealing with the American West. Beyond the Hundredth Meridian remains in print fifty-two years after its initial appearance. Not many books have survived that length of time and thrived, despite competing works on the same subject.

This combination of biography, history, and environmental primer written with the flair and the technical skill of a novelist who could masterfully evoke scenes and sustain a gripping factual narrative sprang from Clarence Edward Dutton: An Appraisal. Seldom has such a classic book had such a humble beginning.

Stegner was a young English instructor at the University of Utah when he produced the Dutton essay. He was ambitious and desperate for recognition, a raise (he was earning $1,700 a year), and steady employment in the Depression years. The essay contains hints, in terms of style and content, of what Stegner would eventually produce. Dutton was Stegner’s first published work of nonfiction, and it is fair to say that it lead him, in conjunction with Bernard DeVoto’s prodding, to the subject of conservation."
—from the foreword

Clarence Edward Dutton: An Appraisal was first published by the University of Utah in 1936 and has since become a rarity on the antiquarian book market. It is reproduced in facsimile for this edition.
[more]

front cover of George William Featherstonhaugh
George William Featherstonhaugh
The First U.S. Government Geologist
Edmund Berkeley and Dororthy Berkeley
University of Alabama Press, 1988
"U.S. historians can read this book with considerable profit for the details it offers; general readers can enjoy it as a straightforward and informative biography."
Choice

"For anyone interested in the history of American geology, knowledge of G. W. Featherstonhaugh (1780-1866) is both essential and hard to obtain. He was the force behind the first railroad in America; a pioneer in scientific agriculture; an essayist, poet, and novelist; a lobbyist; a linguist; and a daring diplomat who saved the king and queen of France from certain death. [Yet] his strongest tie was with the geology. [This] biography is interesting, well researched and well written. It is a balanced study of a complex man who did so much work and generated such controversy."
Earth Sciences History

[more]

front cover of Grove Karl Gilbert
Grove Karl Gilbert
A Great Engine of Research
Stephen J. Pyne
University of Iowa Press, 1980
As Stephen Pyne reveals in his biography, few other scientists can match Grove Karl Gilbert’s range of talents. A premier explorer of the American West who made major contributions to the cascade of new discoveries about the earth, Gilbert described two novel forms of mountain building, invented the concept of the graded stream, inaugurated modern theories of lunar origin, helped found the science of geomorphology, and added to the canon of conservation literature.
    Gilbert knew most of geology's grand figures--including John Wesley Powell, Clarence Dutton,  and Clarence King--and Pyne's chronicle of the imperturbable, quietly unconventional Gilbert is couterpointed with sketches of these prominent scientists. The man who wrote that "happiness is sitting under a tent with walls uplifted, just after a brief shower,", created answers to the larger questions of the earth in ways that have become classics of his science.
[more]

front cover of Henry Darwin Rogers, 1808–1866
Henry Darwin Rogers, 1808–1866
American Geologist
Patsy Gerstner
University of Alabama Press, 1994

Henry Darwin Rogers was one of the first professional geologists in the United States. He directed two of the earliest state geological surveys--New Jersey and Pennsylvania--in the mid-1830s.  His major interest was Pennsylvania, with its Appalachian Mountains, which Rogers saw as great folds of sedimentary rock. He belived that an interpretation of these folds would lead to an understanding of the dynamic processes that had shaped the earth. From Rogers' efforts to explain these Pennsylvania folds came the first uniquely American theory of mountain elevation, a theory that Rogers personally considered his most significant achievement.

 

 

[more]

front cover of A Hero on Mount St. Helens
A Hero on Mount St. Helens
The Life and Legacy of David A. Johnston
Melanie Holmes. Foreword by Jeff Renner
University of Illinois Press, 2019
Serendipity placed David Johnston on Mount St. Helens when the volcano rumbled to life in March 1980. Throughout that ominous spring, Johnston was part of a team conducting scientific research that underpinned warnings about the mountain. Those warnings saved thousands of lives when the most devastating volcanic eruption in U.S. history blew apart Mount St. Helens but killed Johnston on the ridge that now bears his name.

Melanie Holmes tells the story of Johnston's journey from a nature-loving Boy Scout to a committed geologist. Blending science with personal detail, Holmes follows Johnston through his encounters with Aleutian volcanoes, his work helping the Portuguese government assess the geothermal power of the Azores, and his dream job as a volcanologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. Interviews and personal writings reveal what a friend called “the most unjaded person I ever met,” an imperfect but kind and intelligent young scientist passionately in love with his life and work and determined to make a difference.

[more]

front cover of I Have Landed
I Have Landed
The End of a Beginning in Natural History
Stephen Jay Gould
Harvard University Press, 2011
Gould’s final essay collection is based on his remarkable series for Natural History magazine—exactly 300 consecutive essays, with never a month missed, published from 1974 to 2001. Both an intellectually thrilling journey into the nature of scientific discovery and the most personal book he ever published.
[more]

front cover of A Passion For Gold
A Passion For Gold
An Autobiography
Ralph J. Roberts
University of Nevada Press, 2002

Ralph J. Roberts is not a household name in Nevada, but it should be—it was he who discovered the Carlin Belt gold deposits that created a major mining boom in the state in the last four decades of the twentieth century. But this discovery was only one episode of his remarkably eventful life. This colorful and personal account of the author's search for his passion—gold—is a story as adventurous as that of any fictional character.

[more]

front cover of Raphael Pumpelly
Raphael Pumpelly
Gentleman Geologist of the Gilded Age
Peggy Champlin
University of Alabama Press, 1994
The biography of Raphael Pumpelly, a transitional figure in a period of rapid change
 
Raphael Pumpelly: Gentleman Geologist of the Gilded Age provides an excellent opportunity to look at the development of the profession of geology during the years spanned by his career, from 1860 to the early twentieth century. In this period, the practical applications of geology to resource development were of major importance, but geologists were also investigating new subjects, such as petrology, geomorphology, glaciology, and structural geology. These investigations resulted in an explosion of knowledge in these areas and in the growth of subdisciplines. Pumpelly did research in these fields but like others of his generation did not limit himself to any one of them; he remained a generalist in a time of increasing specialization, a transitional figure in a period of rapid change.
 
[more]

front cover of Seeing Things Whole
Seeing Things Whole
The Essential John Wesley Powell
John Wesley Powell; Edited by William deBuys
Island Press, 2001

John Wesley Powell was an American original. He was the last of the nation's great continental explorers and the first of a new breed of public servant: part scientist, part social reformer, part institution builder. His work and life reveal an enduringly valuable way of thinking about land, water, and society as parts of an interconnected whole; he was America's first great bioregional thinker.

Seeing Things Whole presents John Wesley Powell in the full diversity of his achievements and interests, bringing together in a single volume writings ranging from his gripping account of exploring the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon to his views on the evolution of civilization, along with the seminal writings in which he sets forth his ideas on western settlement and the allocation and management of western resources.

The centerpiece of Seeing Things Whole is a series of selections from the famous 1878 Report on the Lands of the Arid Region and related magazine articles in which Powell further develops the themes of the report. In those, he recommends organizing the Arid Lands into watershed commonwealths governed by resident citizens whose interlocking interests create the checks and balances essential to wise stewardship of the land. This was the central focus of John Wesley Powell's bioregional vision, and it remains a model for governance that many westerners see as a viable solution to the resource management conflicts that continue to bedevil the region.

Throughout the collection, award-winning writer and historian William deBuys brilliantly sets the historical context for Powell's work. Section introductions and extensive descriptive notes take the reader through the evolution of John Wesley Powell's interests and ideas from his role as an officer in the Civil War through his critique of Social Darwinism and landmark categorization of Indian languages, to the climatic yet ultimately futile battles he fought to win adoption of his land-use proposals.

Seeing Things Whole presents the essence of the extraordinary legacy that John Wesley Powell has left to the American people, and to people everywhere who strive to reconcile the demands of society with the imperatives of the land.

[more]

front cover of Strata
Strata
William Smith’s Geological Maps
Edited by the Oxford University Museum of Natural History
University of Chicago Press, 2020
Lavishly illustrated with full-color geological maps, tables of strata, geological cross-sections, photographs, and fossil illustrations from the archives of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, the Geological Society, the London Natural History Museum, and others, Strata provides the first complete presentation of the revolutionary work of nineteenth-century geologist William Smith, the so-called father of English geology. It illustrates the story of his career, from apprentice to surveyor for hire and fossil collector, from his 1799 geological map of Bath and table of strata to his groundbreaking 1815 geological strata map, and from his imprisonment for debt to his detailed stratigraphical county maps.
 
This sumptuous volume begins with an introduction by Douglas Palmer that places Smith’s work in the context of earlier, concurrent, and subsequent ideas regarding the structure and natural processes of the earth, geographical mapping, and biostratigraphical theories. The book is then organized into four parts, each beginning with four sheets from Smith’s hand-colored, 1815 strata map, accompanied by related geological cross-sections and county maps, and followed by fossil illustrations by Smith contemporary James Sowerby, all organized by strata. Essays between each section explore the aims of Smith’s work and its application in the fields of mining, agriculture, cartography and hydrology. Strata concludes with reflections on Smith’s later years as an itinerant geologist and surveyor, plagiarism by a rival, receipt of the first Wollaston Medal in recognition of his achievements, and the influence of his geological mapping and biostratigraphical theories on the sciences—all of which culminated in the establishment of the modern geological timescale.
 
Featuring a foreword by Robert Macfarlane, Strata is a glorious testament to the lasting geological and illustrative genius of William Smith, a collection as colossal and awe-inspiring as the layers of the Earth themselves.
[more]

front cover of Unearthing the Nation
Unearthing the Nation
Modern Geology and Nationalism in Republican China
Grace Yen Shen
University of Chicago Press, 2014
Questions of national identity have long dominated China’s political, social, and cultural horizons. So in the early 1900s, when diverse groups in China began to covet foreign science in the name of new technology and modernization, questions of nationhood came to the fore. In Unearthing the Nation, Grace Yen Shen uses the development of modern geology to explore this complex relationship between science and nationalism in Republican China.
           
Shen shows that Chinese geologists—in battling growing Western and Japanese encroachment of Chinese sovereignty—faced two ongoing challenges: how to develop objective, internationally recognized scientific authority without effacing native identity, and how to serve China when China was still searching for a stable national form. Shen argues that Chinese geologists overcame these obstacles by experimenting with different ways to associate the subjects of their scientific study, the land and its features, with the object of their political and cultural loyalties. This, in turn, led them to link national survival with the establishment of scientific authority in Chinese society.

The first major history of modern Chinese geology, Unearthing the Nation introduces the key figures in the rise of the field, as well as several key organizations, such as the Geological Society of China, and explains how they helped bring Chinese geology onto the world stage.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter