Mysteries of Terra Firma: The age and evolution of the Earth by James
Lawrence Powell, The Free Press, $25, ISBN 068487282X
GEOLOGY today is so vastly different from its first incarnation—the
accumulation of beautiful and intriguing samples by gentlemen of
leisure—that it can be hard to appreciate the revolution which has taken
place over the past century. James Lawrence Powell has decided to give us a
hand.
In Mysteries of Terra Firma he tracks this upheaval of ideas by examining
three themes: the measurement of time, continental drift and plate tectonics,
and the importance of planetary and meteorite…
