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To geologists, rocks are beautiful, roadcuts are windowpanes, and the earth is alive, a work in progress. The cataclysmic movement that gives birth to mountains and oceans is ongoing and can still be seen at certain places on our planet. One of these is the Basin and Range region centered in Nevada and Utah.

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  • Draft No. 4

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Draft No. 4 is an elucidation of the writer's craft by a master practitioner. In a series of playful but expertly wrought essays, John McPhee shares insights he's gathered over his career and refined during his long-running course at Princeton University, where he has launched some of the most esteemed writers of several generations. McPhee offers a definitive guide to the crucial decisions regarding structure, diction, and tone that shape nonfiction pieces and presents extracts from some of his best-loved work, subjecting them to wry scrutiny.

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Publisher's Summary

With his Pulitzer Prize-winning Annals of the Former World, John McPhee explores not only the richly varied surface of the United States, but the geological wonders hidden deep beneath our feet. In this final book of the series, he embarks on a fascinating journey across the basement of the continent - the land masses forming Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and thereabouts - with a professor and geochronologist acting as a guide.

Whether Randy Van Schmus is out in the field with his students, or grinding rock in the university lab, he insists the flat plains of middle America are anything but dull. He tells the story of eons of violent upheaval that is written in the features lying far below the shimmering wheat fields. As he shares how scientists are unlocking the secrets of the earth's timetable, millions of years seem but brief moments.

John McPhee's enthusiasm and peerless writing style make the study of geology both accessible and entertaining. And Nelson Runger's thought-provoking performance ensures you will view the earth with fresh insight.
Geology rocks! Listen to more in the Annals of the Former World series.
©2000 John McPhee (P)2000 Recorded Books LLC

Critic Reviews

"McPhee's many fans won't be disappointed with the high-quality descriptive portraits of geologists, their work, and theories." (Publishers Weekly)

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  • Darwin8u
  • Mesa, AZ, United States
  • 12-06-13

End of McPhee's Annals

What I absolutely love about McPhee's nonfiction is his ability to write about place, people and ideas with both beautiful prose and amazing intimacy. My favorite parts are where McPhee weaves place and people, or people and ideas together and establishes the grand metaphor for his book. McPhee picks up pieces of conversation, and stray facts, from these amazing geologists and their satelites that might get missed by most other writers, but manages to find, keep and eventually place these nuggets into his book (written over 20 years) in a way that works to support his big themes.

Seriously, this book is one of my favorite nonfiction works of all time. You can see the mark McPhee left on his students' writing if you've ever read Robert Wright, Richard Preston or New Yorker editor David Remnick. Some consider (McPhee would flunk me for such vague, nonattributable writing I'm sure) McPhee to be the godfather of New New Journalism, but he is much more than that. IMHO, he is the godfather on modern nonfiction writing, period.

That being said, this is the last of the series, and the weakest piece of the book (and also the weakest piece of geology). So, if you are new to McPhee, or interested in listening to 'Annals of the Former World', this is the soft and permeable end. Start wtih 'Basin and Range' >next> 'In Suspect Terrain' >next> 'Rising from the Plains' >next> 'Assembling California' >next>'Crossing the Craton'.

Just beware Audible lists 'Crossing the Craton' as book 4, but it is really Book 5 because for whatever reason Book 4 ('Assembling California') has "separated" from main body of "Annals of the Former World'. California geology writing is just as mysterious as California's people and geology, I guess.

16 of 19 people found this review helpful