The final entry in McPhee's four-volume hymn to geology, known collectively as Annals of the Former World (most recently Rising from the Plains, 1986). Most of this volume appeared previously in The New Yorker. McPhee again displays his talent for explaining, without denaturing, technical matters that could make most heads reel. This time, he and geologist Eldridge Moores clamber around California and the Southwest, with junkets to Macedonia and Cyprus, to observe how the earth as we know it came to be. The investigation spans years; as it proceeds, McPhee makes geological obscurities simple and geological grotesqueries lovely. We see how pieces of earth fused to form California; among other things, this book is a Festschrift for the theory of continental drift—the idea that chunks of earth separate or collide, creating continents, mountain chains, gulfs. Moores reads road cuts like thumbprints; near the Donner Pass, he spots the outcropping of a quadrillion-ton chunk of granite humped under California. The 1848 California gold rush is detailed, a period when human time (measured in lifetimes) and geological time (measured in cons) conjoined, and yellow nuggets the size of shoe boxes fell out of streams. McPhee muses much on these two time streams, which also merge in the terror of earthquakes. The book's finest passage is a step-by-step retelling, as if in slow-motion, of the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, hideous in its eeriness ("In Asbury Heights, a man is watering his patch of grass. He suddenly feels faint, his knees weaken, and his front lawn flutters like water under wind") but doing nothing to postpone the dreaded Big One To Come. McPhee's overall lesson? That history is the bridesmaid of geology—and that the earth is a prankster. The author offers this wonderful testimony to the weirdness of plate tectonics: "The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone." Intolerable if one has no taste for mysteries beneath the soil; otherwise, riveting.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-374-10645-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1992
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both...
Italian theoretical physicist Rovelli (General Relativity: The Most Beautiful of Theories, 2015, etc.) shares his thoughts on the broader scientific and philosophical implications of the great revolution that has taken place over the past century.
These seven lessons, which first appeared as articles in the Sunday supplement of the Italian newspaper Sole 24 Ore, are addressed to readers with little knowledge of physics. In less than 100 pages, the author, who teaches physics in both France and the United States, cogently covers the great accomplishments of the past and the open questions still baffling physicists today. In the first lesson, he focuses on Einstein's theory of general relativity. He describes Einstein's recognition that gravity "is not diffused through space [but] is that space itself" as "a stroke of pure genius." In the second lesson, Rovelli deals with the puzzling features of quantum physics that challenge our picture of reality. In the remaining sections, the author introduces the constant fluctuations of atoms, the granular nature of space, and more. "It is hardly surprising that there are more things in heaven and earth, dear reader, than have been dreamed of in our philosophy—or in our physics,” he writes. Rovelli also discusses the issues raised in loop quantum gravity, a theory that he co-developed. These issues lead to his extraordinary claim that the passage of time is not fundamental but rather derived from the granular nature of space. The author suggests that there have been two separate pathways throughout human history: mythology and the accumulation of knowledge through observation. He believes that scientists today share the same curiosity about nature exhibited by early man.
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both scientists and general readers.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-18441-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A magnificent account of a central reality of our times, incorporating deep scientific expertise, broad political and social knowledge, and ethical insight, and Idled with beautifully written biographical sketches of the men and women who created nuclear physics. Rhodes describes in detail the great scientific achievements that led up to the invention of the atomic bomb. Everything of importance is examined, from the discovery of the atomic nucleus and of nuclear fission to the emergence of quantum physics, the invention of the mass-spectroscope and of the cyclotron, the creation of such man-made elements as plutonium and tritium, and implementation of the nuclear chain reaction in uranium. Even more important, Rhodes shows how these achievements were thrust into the arms of the state, which culminated in the unfolding of the nuclear arms race. Often brilliantly, he records the rise of fascism and of anti-Semitism, and the intensification of nationalist ambitions. He traces the outbreak of WW II, which provoked a hysterical rivalry among nations to devise the bomb. This book contains a grim description of Japanese resistance, and of the horrible psychological numbing that caused an unparalleled tolerance for human suffering and destruction. Rhodes depicts the Faustian scale of the Manhattan Project. His account of the dropping of the bomb itself, and of the awful firebombing that prepared its way, is unforgettable. Although Rhodes' gallery of names and events is sometimes dizzying, his scientific discussions often daunting, he has written a book of great drama and sweep. A superb accomplishment.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1986
ISBN: 0684813785
Page Count: 932
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1986
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