Tag: books
The Perfect Book for Coal Lovers (and Also Haters)
It’s Coalmas! Around this time of the year, some people threaten to leave coal in our stockings like it’s a bad thing. Pfft. Geologists know coal is actually a very amazing rock and very cool to have a lump of.
If you’re not convinced that holding a several hundred year-old shiny black flammable vestige of a really unique geological era is a fabulous thing, or if you just want to marvel at its remarkable past, let me suggest Coal: A Human History by Barbara Freese. This is one of the best books I read in 2022. And I’m not just saying that because I’m a coal miner’s daughter with a soft spot for rocks that burn. I would have loved it even if I hated the vile, polluting stuff.
Standing of the Stones: Island Volcanoes Abounding Edition
Hello and welcome to a new, semi-weekly feature in which I’ll share snippets of earth science news, cool things I’ve stumbled across, pretty pictures, status reports on upcoming articles, and whatever else seems interesting.
La Palma: Still on Fire
This has been one of the longest eruptions in La Palma’s recorded history, and is posed to be the longest, if it keeps going. Some of the recent lava fountains have exceeded 1,600 feet (500m) in height. The person who runs the GeologyHub channel has discovered a pattern in the data that suggests something interesting (and ominous to the locals) about the relationship between deep earthquakes and eruption activity on the island.
Can you believe where some of that ash ended up?!
It looks like the eruption may break some records. Interesting times indeed.
Why Is La Palma Like This?
Iceland from the West to the South: A Meh Guide With Some Eye-Popping Mistakes
(This post first appeared on Patreon. To get early access, plus nifty extras, all while supporting Rosetta Stones, please click here.)
So of course with all of the Iceland Volcano excitement, I had to run out and buy a bunch of books on Icelandic geology. It’s actually not super easy to find affordable ones in English. So I was very pleased to find one published by Springer for a good price: Iceland from the West to the South by Wolfgang Fraedrich. Springer is all about science written by scientists. I was stoked.
I have now read it, and…I’m considerably less stoked.
Resurrecting Pompeii: The Testimony of Skeletons
It’s amazing what bones will tell you if you know what questions to ask. Dr. Estelle Lazer spent years making inquiries of the skeletons of Pompeii, and her Resurrecting Pompeii is filled with their stories.
This is an academic work, written in academic language, so please don’t go into it expecting an easy, breezy read. There isn’t a ton of geology involved, either. You’re going to be encountering more anatomy and pathology than you might have been strictly prepared for. But if you want to see a lot of myths busted, and learn who the people trapped in Pompeii by the eruption were, this book will more than repay all the time you spend googling unfamiliar terms.
Dana’s Pandemic Holiday Shopping Guide
Ah, yes, it’s that time of year again, where the holidays bunch up like they’ve put off celebrating til the last minute and suddenly it’s time to give All The Gifts. Of course, this being 2020, and many of us being in America where the ostensible leader can’t see reality past his artificially inflated ego, this is a complicated holiday season. Many of us will be socially distancing still. Viruses don’t take holidays, even when we wish they would.
Thanks to eCommerce, though, we can still give our loved ones some nice little gifts if we don’t want to skip that part, many of which will help while away a long pandemic winter. Let’s explore!
Our Fabulous Floods of Fire and Ice Book List
Floods of lava, followed by floods of glacial lake water, formed some of the most intriguing landscapes in the American West. The books herein explore the remarkable geologic events involved. Whether you’re looking for cool summer reading (Southern Hemisphere) or some hawt winter stories (Northern Hemisphere), I’ve got you covered. Here’s your all-ages pass to the stories behind some of the most spectacular landscapes on Earth!
Stoned: The Exact Right Book for all Gemstone and Geology Lovers
Right from the title, you know you’re in for a good time.
Aja Raden’s Stoned: Jewelry, Obsession, and How Desire Shapes the World is written in the irreverant but informative tone that turns otherwise dry, academic facts fun. And yet it doesn’t treat its subject lightly: this book is dense with geology, gemology, history, politics, economics, sociology, and human drama. Few people could pull off writing a book like this. Aja makes it look easy breezy lemon squeezy.
So, yes, you’re going to enjoy yourself, but you’re also going to come out with your knowledge raised to critical nerdicality levels, so be prepared. (more…)
A Must-Have Book for Lava Loving Kids: What’s So Hot About Volcanoes?
Having enjoyed Wendell A. Duffield’s Chasing Lava immensely, I was beyond delighted to discover that Wendell had written a book for younger people. I couldn’t order it fast enough.
What’s So Hot About Volcanoes is a fantastic choice for anyone looking for a book about volcanoes for older kids and tweens, or even adults who want an authoritative but not too technical introduction to how volcanoes work. Younger readers should be able to handle it, too, with assistance from older kids and adults. And it’s got a hook absolutely no one can resist: what happened to Wendell when he was standing on a fresh Kilauea lava field and the seismologist at Hawaiian Volcano Observatory told him the pattern of seismicity right underneath him suggested he should probably run away immediately!
Chasing Lava: A Fun and Fascinating Memoir of Hawaiian Volcanology
If you’re looking for a light, breezy, but informative book about volcanoes from a genuine volcanologist, I’ve got it right here for you. Chasing Lava: A Geologist’s Adventures at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory by Wendell Duffield is a delightful memoir of his years working at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. There’s a wonderful sense of adventure infusing the whole book, and he gets us up close and personal with Madame Pele’s handiwork.
Newly-hatched USGS geologist Wendell, his wife Anne, and their pets were stationed on the Big Island from 1969-1972. He worked on Kilauea Volcano at a time when the theory of plate tectonics was still brand new, our instruments were still bulky and somewhat primative, and volcanoes were much less understood than they are now.
Soundings: A Richly Detailed Prose Map of Marie Tharp’s Life and Legacy
History dislikes remembering science’s founding mothers. So you may have never heard of the mother of the mid-ocean ridge. She was one of the parents of plate tectonics. Her 100th birthday is today. And Hali Felt’s Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman Who Mapped the Ocean Floor is the book you need to read about her.
Hali isn’t an earth scientist, but after immersing herself in Marie’s life and work, you’d never know it. She draws the birth of plate tectonics with as much skill and assurance as Marie drew her remarkable maps. But she doesn’t just tell a science story.