Annals of the Former World - John McPhee

Written by John McPhee
Read by Nelson Runger
Format: M4B
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Abridged

[Chapterized m4b]

Note: This includes 4 full-length titles published individually between 1981 and 1993, plus a short fifth title published in 1998. Annals of the Former World is the final compilation of the project.

The first title, Basin and Range, includes “A Narrative Table of Contents” which gives an overview of the project.

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Titles Info:

1. Basin and Range
Originally published in 1981
Audiobook published in 1999
Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins

2. In Suspect Terrain
Originally published in 1983
Audiobook published in 2000
Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins

3. Rising From the Plains
Originally published in 1986
Audiobook published in 2000
Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins

4. Assembling California
Originally published in 1993
Audiobook published in 1993
Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins

5. Crossing the Craton
Originally published in 1998
Audiobook published in 2000
Length: 1 hr and 46 mins

All audiobooks published by Recorded Books and narrated by Nelson Runger.

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Wikipedia:

Annals of the Former World is a book on geology written by John McPhee and published in 1998 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.

The book presents a geological history of North America, and was researched and written over the course of two decades beginning in 1978. It consists of a compilation of five books, the first four of which were previously published as Basin and Range (1981), In Suspect Terrain (1983), Rising from the Plains (1986), and Assembling California (1993), plus a final book, Crossing the Craton. A narrative table of contents provides an overview of the project, which largely consisted of a series of road journeys by McPhee across the North American continent in the company of noted geologists.

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Amazon.com:

In 1978 New Yorker magazine staff writer John McPhee set out making notes for an ambitious project: a geological history of North America, centered, for the sake of convenience, on the 40th parallel, a history that encompasses billions of years. In 1981 he published the first of the four books that would come from his research: Basin and Range, a study of the mountainous lands between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevadas. Two years later came In Suspect Terrain, a grand overview of the Appalachian mountain system. In 1986 McPhee released Rising from the Plains, a history of the Rocky Mountains set largely in Wyoming. And in 1993 came Assembling California, a survey of the area geologists find to be a laboratory of volcanic and tectonic processes, a place where geology can be watched in the making. Annals of the Former World gathers these four volumes, which McPhee always conceived of as a whole, to make that epic of the Earth’s formation; to it he adds a fifth book, Crossing the Craton, which introduces the continent’s ancient core, underlying what is now Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska.

McPhee’s great virtue as a journalist covering the sciences–and any other of the countless subjects he has taken on, for that matter–is his ability to distill and explain complex matters: here, for example, the processes of mineral deposition or of plate tectonics. He does so by allowing geologists to speak for themselves and an entertaining lot they are, those sometimes odd men and women who puzzle out the landscape for clues to its most ancient past. Annals of the Former World is a magisterial work of popular science for which geologists–and devotees of good writing–will be grateful. –Gregory McNamee

Reviews:

“Tripling as a geology primer, an autobiography and a panorama of the nation, bejeweled with splendid vignettes and set-pieces, “Annals of the Former World” offers a view of America like no other. It is the outpouring of a master stylist. Yield to its geopoetry and have your eyes opened to a barely known aspect of the continent.”
–Roy Porter, Los Angeles Times

“John McPhee has produced, over nearly a quarter of a century, a deep philology of the continent. Annals of the Former World is surely a classic. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was timeless.”
–A.O. Scott, Village Voice

Library Journal:

McPhee is the most celebrated contemporary writer on North American geology, and Annals is his magnum opus, combining edited and revised sections from previous works with two new essays.

Scientific American:

“It’s a real schlemazel,” geologist Anita Harris said to McPhee as they examined geologic formations at a road cut along Interstate 80 near the Delaware Water Gap. “Not by accident is geology called geology. It’s named for Gaea, the daughter of Chaos.” The rocks are often chaotic, but the study of them is not in McPhee’s pellucid presentation. His meaty book, adorned with 25 stunning landform maps, is the result of a 20-year project in which he set himself the goal of portraying geology and its practitioners in a way that would “arrest the attention of other people while achieving acceptability in the geologic community.” He started with the intention of setting forth “a sort of cross section of North America at about the fortieth parallel” but wound up casting a much wider net. A measure of the scope of his tale is provided by the structure of Book 2: “In Suspect Terrain,” which begins with a profile of Harris, examines the Delaware Water Gap as a fragment of the Appalachians, discusses the Appalachians and plate tectonics and presents the theory of continental glaciation. Book 2 and the four others fill out an absorbing picture of the former world–the North America of past geologic eras back to the beginning of the Mesozoic some 245 million years ago.