Annals of the Former World, by John McPhee

As this book is a massive collection of five volumes worth of writing (four volumes of which were previously released as separate books), I thought it best to separately review each of the component parts of this large work and additionally review the whole context of the work to show its overall cohesion and themes.  The five parts of the book are as follows:  Basin and Range, In Suspect Terrain, Rising From The Plains, Assembling California, and Crossing the Craton.  The first four of these were previously released as books before the whole project was assembled together.

Book One:  Basin and Range

This book is a moderately accessible and dryly humorous examination of the impact of the plate tectonics theory on the geology of the United States.  It focuses particularly on New Jersey and Nevada, and itself attempts in an idiosyncratic way to piece together the “big picture” of a large swath of geologic history through the use of humorous and highly speculative anecdotes.  It is clear that the author, John McPhee, likes to keep an ironic distance from the scientists he works with in his writings, so that he can at least present their theories in a non-dogmatic way, but it is equally clear that the author brings substantial bias to the table, including a bias towards field work and away from theory.

It is also clear that geology is a field not far off from theology.  The obsessive rock collecting and weaving of widely disparate rocks into grand narratives with forbidding and complicated insider language as well as the proliferation of speculative theories, ferocious religious arguments, and an almost god-like view towards the rest of humanity that is blinded by the contemporary and unaware of the supposed deep time of the world all make young-earth theologians and geologists unlikely but compelling siblings on opposite sides of the culture war.  Unfortunately, while Mr. McPhee’s writing is very dryly humorous, it appears as if he lacks the understanding of the larger implications to make his work truly accessible to those on the other side of the line from where he stands, given his own smug arrogance.

This book is not a deeply organized one, but rather a scattered series of anecdotes about the history of geological theory and its various turf battles, biographical sketches of notable figures, accounts of how geologists make bad drivers because of their swerving whenever they see a roadcut, or the attempts of geologists like Deffeyes to combine research skills with extracurricular activities like extracting silver from mine tailings.  The result is an interesting book, but not entirely a coherent one, one that reveals more about the wacky and Sunday-morning religious television world of “scientific” speculation than about the actual geology of the United States, or world.

Book Two:  In Suspect Terrain

Though this book purports itself to be about science, it is really more about religion.  To be more specific, this book, which largely focuses on “doubters” like Anita Harris (a skeptic of the fullness of the theory of plate tectonics) and less on Louis Agassiz (a skeptic of the fullness of the Theory of Evolution).  This book continues the general sort of mockery towards theist religion (Anita Harris herself is an irreligious Jew), but makes an interesting connection between evolution and plate tectonics that leads one to believe that the oversold nature of both theories is legitimately in question.

One suspects this consistent and frequent comparison of geology and biology is a strategic move and not accidental.  Perhaps, despite his hostility to theism (particularly of the Young Earth Creationist variety), Mr. McPhee is obliquely commenting on the science wars by supporting a focus on the data and making a hostile attack on those who are armchair theoreticians without any knowledge of the facts and data, which would include most “plate tectonics boys” as well as most evolutionary biologists.  The greater tolerance of the geology community makes it a softer target, so that the sometimes rambling but usually entertaining words of Mr. McPhee burst out through the mountain of scientific dogma much like water seeks out weaknesses and soft spots in rock to make gaps.  The river of words therefore follows the same course as the rivers of water.

Geographically, this book focuses on the wonders of the Appalachian Mountain region, and different (speculative) stories of how they were formed, with occasional detours to talk about Swiss mountains and the relationship of golf courses to glacial moraine terrain.  The social and cultural implications of the book are intriguing, and having as the scientific expert a woman as fierce and quotable as Dr. Harris allows the author to have his cake and eat it too–to present himself as an expounder of the religious dogma of geology while also preserving some “independent-minded” credibility by having as his expert a “doubter” of the most popular dogma, but one who herself helped the theory along in its early days with her own quirky research (that ended up serving as a road map for oil companies in search of petroleum deposits).  It is a savvy and strategic move.  John McPhee is certainly no dummy.

Book Three:  Rising From The Plains

This book contains several hallmarks of McPhee’s writing on geology–a fondness for quirky narrative (in this case, the love life of a Wyoming schoolteacher and a Scottish rancher who was the nephew of John Muir), an in-depth examination of the views, research, and careers of a skeptical but wide-ranging regional geologist (in this case David Love, the son of the schoolteacher and rancher), and an examination of some very serious consequences of geological research (including the uranium mining industry in Wyoming).

This book is really about the geology of Wyoming, and has a lot to say about a state that I know very little about (never having visited it).  There are a few fascinating observations to make, not just the rampant speculation that seems inherent in this kind of material, but also more musings on a favorite McPhee rant–his preference for field geologists of moderately iconoclastic views.  McPhee gets to enjoy his field trips playing the ingenue and learning about rocks and speculations on hotspots and orogeny while the reader is treated to odd and quirky stories about an obscure but important geologist.  There are far worse ways to spend your time.

Additionally, this book has the added bonus of talking about the water crisis of Wyoming and the relationship between sodium deposits in Wyoming canyons and the rising salinity of the Colorado River basin, as well as the effects of sodium and selenium on the harming of Wyoming’s livestock industry.  The corrupting effects of modern “boom towns” on the social structure of Wyoming is also noted.  Suffice it to say, this book was probably one of the volumes that inspired and informed the gloomy prognostications of Cadillac Desert [1] [2], whose pessimism it mirrors.

Book Four:  Assembling California

This book continues a few of the trends that McPhee establishes throughout the rest of this sizable book, showing himself to be quite the creature of habit as a writer.  In particular, this work shows the continuance of a focus on a regional geologist, in this case Eldridge Moores of Cal-Davis, the continued focus on the theory of plate tectonics, which Moores is definitely a part of, and a continued focus on the useful analogies between geology and the larger social culture.  This book is therefore a useful read, even for those who are not Californians.

The focus of this book on Eldridge Moore, descendant of two generations of freelance small-scale miners, provides yet another case where geology serves as the intersection between life and science.  Moores’ focus on plate tectonics and his interest in ophiolites–remnants of ocean crust in island or continental terranes, has led him to help uncover the places where the riches of the ocean floor (like gold and silver) find themselves on the land.  Where one finds serpentine (a mantle rock that has been in contact with seawater), one finds gold.  Where one finds gold, one makes a gold rush–and populates a place like Calfornia.  Additionally, Moores’ interest in subduction zones, transform faults, and other like geologies allows him not only to provide useful insights about California, but also to provide information about Macedonia, Chile, and Cyprus, where similar geological states appear to exist (either by field observation–a familiar hobby horse of McPhee) or theory.

The theory that is particularly interesting in this go around is that certain territories are composed of the mixed up rocks of the seafloor that have gotten caught up in circumstances beyond their control and thus serve as “no man’s land” in a geological sense.  Some of these areas, like the Southern part of Florida, Cyprus, Macedonia, Chile, California, Kashmir, Tibet, and so on, have served as places that are culturally or politically “no man’s land” as well.  It would appear likely, therefore, that there is a link between the rocks and the culture and political state of an area.  There are plenty of worthwhile implications of that theory of the author’s.

Most of the book focuses on the horrors of mining and what it did to the Californian environment, as well as the ways in which the culture and lifestyle of Californians (as well as their frequent blindness to potential danger) relates to the geology of their land.  Additionally, the book comments on the geology of a strike-slip/transform fault system like that of the San Andreas Fault system, the sorts of ways that roads and finger lakes follow such fault systems, and the screwed up “Franciscan” rock systems that result from the various mixed up geologic forces.  The book thus is interesting on both a cultural and a scientific level.

Book Five:  Crossing The Croton

This book is more of a slightly oversized essay than a full book, and was included in this volume simply to flesh out the details from the existing four books that had been published independently to complete the set of I-80’s geology in the United States.  The focus is on the technical details of radiocarbon dating (especially the uranium-lead dating that comes from zircons), the connection between the failed rift valley in the Middle of the United States and similar triple point rift valleys in Somalia and the Red Sea and Baja California.  The local field-study geologist in this case is Randy Van Schmus.

The essay shows that a lot more is going on than meets the eye under the seemingly dull terrain/terrane of the Midwest.  Additionally, this essay shows that the difficulties with finding better information is the absence of multicellular life to provide fossils as well as the uneven nature of the boring performed in the earth, based in the United States on the presence of oil drills (which are absent in some areas, like Iowa, leading to a relative absence of information about rock structures).  Therefore this essay does a nice job of summing up the work as a whole and continuing a few of its basic themes.

Conclusion

Annals of the Former World is a large book, but one with a consistent pattern in its approach.  Each of its five books focuses on a regional geologist along the course of I-80 who specializes in field work and whose ideas are rather pragmatic and empirically-based.  Each book examines the mining and oil exploration efforts that underlie American geological research, as well as provide a useful overview of world geology seen through the eyes of American geologists.  All of the books provide a thoughtful examination of the unsolved mysteries of geology, the burning research questions, the numerous and extensive gaps in knowledge, as well as the interesting and fascinating relationship between culture and politics and the geological underpinnings of the earth.  Someone needs to give Mr. McPhee an honorary degree in geology–he has done the field proud, seeking to be a one-man show in promoting the continuation and increase of field studies, with a competent and impressive prose style capable of inspiring anyone interested enough in rocks to read about it for 660 pages of technical prose.  That is no mean achievement, despite its occasional faults.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/book-review-cadillac-desert/

[2] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/examining-the-cadillac-desert-doomsday-scenarios/