{"id":2479,"date":"2010-12-22T12:28:39","date_gmt":"2010-12-22T17:28:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=2479"},"modified":"2010-12-22T12:28:39","modified_gmt":"2010-12-22T17:28:39","slug":"book-review-the-planet-in-a-pebble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2010\/12\/22\/book-review-the-planet-in-a-pebble\/","title":{"rendered":"Book review – The Planet in a Pebble"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A couple of months I was approached by the publisher of this book, Oxford\u00a0 University Press, to ask if I would like a review copy and was intrigued.\u00a0 The premise of the book is remarkable – that it is possible to write an engaging popular science book based around the geology of a single pebble.\u00a0 And not an obviously fascinating pebble either – this is a piece of apparently dull, grey Silurian slate from Wales.\u00a0 This is the sort of piece of rock that most geologists would ignore on a stony beach – and indeed the publisher also appears to have had misgivings about the subject as the cover (pictured to the right) shows a pebble that is most certainly not Silurian slate.\u00a0 A slate pebble looks like the one pictured below.\u00a0 Ironically, this can also be a beautiful piece of rock, so I cannot understand why the publisher has used such a misleading (to the geologist at least) image.<\/p>\n

So I started wondering how such a book came about.\u00a0 Was it a drunken conversation late one night on a field trip in deepest Wales (i.e. I imagine a cottage in the hills outside Lampeter, with a coal fire burning), in which the author and another geologist got into a bragging contest in which they tried to out-compete each other for who could write a successful popular geology book on the most obscure topic?\u00a0 Probably not, but if so, the author Jan Zalasiewicz, certainly set himself a tough task!<\/p>\n

So, does it work as a popular science book?\u00a0 The answer is a remarkable and resounding yes.\u00a0 The book is fascinating and engaging, stretching from the earliest foundations of time, in which the matter that now forms the pebble was created, to modern day beach environments.\u00a0 Along the way the book describes the nature of modern geology, and in particular the detailed forensic investigations that are needed to piece together the history of our planet.\u00a0 In so doing, the book overturns the popular myth that geologists are essentially visual scientists, doing little more than interpreting features based on observation and simple logical rules.\u00a0 The great strength of the book is in the writing, which is at times beautiful, always engaging, and well-paced.\u00a0 There is no sense that the book ever stalls – so often a problem in popular science writing – and the author manages to express his own love and fascination for the discipline.\u00a0 I also appreciate the emphasis that the author placed on describing what we don’t know, as well as what we do.\u00a0 We still have so much to learn, and it is important to communicate that fact.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>That said, the book is not perfect, although the issues are perhaps niggles rather than major causes for concern.\u00a0 First, the author is correct in stating that humans love a story, but we also need visual information in order to understand properly.\u00a0 The book is under-illustrated, and those illustrations that are present are really rather weak and basic in comparison with the prose.\u00a0 Perhaps the idea is to produce a fully illustrated coffee table version in due course (now that would be a wonderful tome) but for now the book is let down a little by this weakness.\u00a0 The plates, in colour which is good, are frustrating in that the captions are at the start of the book.\u00a0 That meant that when I came to the crucial passages\u00a0 I found myself juggling between three different parts of the book, a most frustrating experience, if one that is good for developing hand-eye coordination skills!\u00a0 In addition, the photographs mostly lack a scale bar or any other visual clue as to size – poor practice that is always criticised at undergraduate level.<\/p>\n

Second, the end of the book, which details the period in which the pebble reaches the surface and encounters modern environments, feels rushed and somewhat sketchy.\u00a0 Given that this is the environment in which we live, this is a shame.\u00a0 It probably reflects the author’s own geological background, which is understandable, but it leaves a section that really feels weak in comparison to the rest.\u00a0 And finally, in a couple of places the description of modern processes really feels a bit under-researched.\u00a0 For example, we now know that the generation of fractures in rock masses by ice comes not from freeze-thaw but from segregation, and the idea that waves cause cliff disintegration through the generation of air pressures in fractures also has the feel of high school science.<\/p>\n

But these are minor criticisms.\u00a0 I would strongly recommend the book – if in the unlikely event that it was written as a bet then the author has undoubtedly won the prize.\u00a0 I would buy it as a Christmas present, but would want to be sure that the recipient is au fait with at least basic science.\u00a0 Jan Zalasiewicz undoubtedly has a talent for this type of writing, and I am sure many more books will follow.\u00a0 I would not hesitate to buy the next one, even if it is on an equally obscure topic.<\/p>\n

Comments from anyone else who has read it are welcome – do you share my views?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of months I was approached by the publisher of this book, Oxford\u00a0 University Press, to ask if I would like a review copy and was intrigued.\u00a0 The premise of the book is remarkable – that it is possible to write an engaging popular science book based around the geology of a single pebble.\u00a0 And not an obviously fascinating pebble either – this is a piece of apparently dull, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[513],"class_list":["post-2479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-book-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}