How the Mountains Grew

A New Geological History of North America

By: John Dvorak

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Hardcover | 1 September 2021

At a Glance

Hardcover
464 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.24 x 4.06

Hardcover

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The incredible story of the creation of a continent—our continent— from the acclaimed author of The Last Volcano and Mask of the Sun.

The immense scale of geologic time is difficult to comprehend. Our lives—and the entirety of human history—are mere nanoseconds on this timescale. Yet we hugely influenced by the land we live on. From shales and fossil fuels, from lake beds to soil composition, from elevation to fault lines, what could be more relevant that the history of the ground beneath our feet?

For most of modern history, geologists could say little more about why mountains grew than the obvious: there were forces acting inside the Earth that caused mountains to rise. But what were those forces? And why did they act in some places of the planet and not at others?

When the theory of plate tectonics was proposed, our concept of how the Earth worked experienced a momentous shift. As the Andes continue to rise, the Atlantic Ocean steadily widens, and Honolulu creeps ever closer to Tokyo, this seemingly imperceptible creep of the Earth is revealed in the landscape all around us.

But tectonics cannot—and do not—explain everything about the wonders of the North American landscape. What about the Black Hills? Or the walls of chalk that stand amongst the rolling hills of west Kansas? Or the fact that the states of Washington and Oregon are slowly rotating clockwise, and there a diamond mine in Arizona?

It all points to the geologic secrets hidden inside the 2-billion-year-old-continental masses. A whopping ten times older than the rocky floors of the ocean, continents hold the clues to the long history of our planet.

With a sprightly narrative that vividly brings this science to life, John Dvorak's How the Mountains Grew will fill readers with a newfound appreciation for the wonders of the land we live on.

Industry Reviews

“Earth scientist John Dvorak’s exuberant new book How the Mountains Grew: A New Geological History of North America puts these Anthropocene fires into the context of deep time. Dvorak is a wonderful storyteller. He weaves disparate threads of past worlds into a coherent fabric of time, place and life that provides the ultimate context for all specific modern environmental issues. When reading How the Mountains Grew, I could easily imagine being outdoors with him breaking rocks in a search for fossils, crawling up some canyon wall to count the sands of time or trekking across one of our great ice sheets. His human stories are also fascinating, especially those involving serendipitous discoveries. Is this really a ‘new’ geologic history? Yes. Dvorak challenges the conventional wisdom. [The book] has a vast scope and an envelope-pushing narrative. This new geologic history of North America will enrich your everyday personal experiences.”

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