The Oxford Companion to the Earth edited by Paul Hancock and Brian
Skinner, Oxford University Press, £39.50, ISBN 0198540396
Geology keeps day-to-day problems in perspective. Even the bloodiest day at a
desk or in the lab pales into insignificance against a global blight of life a
few million years ago. Set against 4.6 billion years of Earth history, modern
life looks good. To put a sense of proportion back into your life, take a look
at The Oxford Companion to the Earth. It has plenty of pertinent
information for those “worse things happened in the Cambrian” moments. But it is
much, much more than that. Here is a light but authoritative and very
well-organised overview of the earth sciences in the broadest sense.
Where else, for example, might you find out that, in 1989, an average
American consumed 7.7 tonnes of rock in one form or another? And that all the
new shopping malls and roads required less than a quarter of the stone removed
by erosion in the same year? And if you wonder about Rodinia and Pannotia, or
want to distinguish between different types of water, look no further. (You will
have to look these up yourself.)
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The fascinating facts it offers reach well into climatology and engineering,
matching the concerns of today’s earth scientists. And an excellent pick of
geological notables are given brief biographies.
But as well as reference material you’ll find jokes, wine, and ecclesiastical
geology, not to mention the Renaissance. It is a book that lives up to the
title’s promise of a companion. Knowledgeable, prone to telling you more than
you wanted to know about some things, and engagingly frivolous at
times—it’s everything a friend should be.
