Scan barcode
A review by veronicaellis1
Assembling California by John McPhee
3.0
I loved: McPhee's breakdowns of geology, time, backstories of outcrops, fault and plate placements, theories of continental drift, Protopangea, pangea, and mountain ranges from California to the Apenines to the Andes to the Himalayas and LITERALLY everything in-between. I loved the descriptions of California mining camps, their sites and situations, and the characters passing through. I loved the flurried and panicked descriptions of earthquakes in 1906 and 1989, the people and places and things strewn about, fault lines themselves.
But I didn't love this book. I really wanted to. I debated giving 4 stars, because it's John, and he does some great stuff here, but I didn't feel drawn to any aspect of it — which is weird to me, considering I've lived in California my whole life, have been a devotée of the New Yorker for just about that long, and spend a considerable amount of time by the side of a Berkeley-bred geologist.
Maybe I read too quickly, and another go-round will lend itself to a more fulfilling, in-depth understanding of everything he presents. Maybe I need to go to the rocks myself, and really think about them with this book in hand. I find I have so many more questions than I did before starting the book (I'll ask Owen later), but I guess it's like the central point of this book, a concept that my twelfth-grade math teacher once said to us: "the more you learn about something, the more you realize you know nothing about it." Which now that I think of it is kind of an exciting thing. So I'll think more about it like that, and consult my introductory manual and dog-eared pages, and while I felt more like a passerby of this book than someone involved in it, all of this is fleeting anyhow. But I did learn a lot from this book — at least I know what questions to ask.
But I didn't love this book. I really wanted to. I debated giving 4 stars, because it's John, and he does some great stuff here, but I didn't feel drawn to any aspect of it — which is weird to me, considering I've lived in California my whole life, have been a devotée of the New Yorker for just about that long, and spend a considerable amount of time by the side of a Berkeley-bred geologist.
Maybe I read too quickly, and another go-round will lend itself to a more fulfilling, in-depth understanding of everything he presents. Maybe I need to go to the rocks myself, and really think about them with this book in hand. I find I have so many more questions than I did before starting the book (I'll ask Owen later), but I guess it's like the central point of this book, a concept that my twelfth-grade math teacher once said to us: "the more you learn about something, the more you realize you know nothing about it." Which now that I think of it is kind of an exciting thing. So I'll think more about it like that, and consult my introductory manual and dog-eared pages, and while I felt more like a passerby of this book than someone involved in it, all of this is fleeting anyhow. But I did learn a lot from this book — at least I know what questions to ask.