Geology has been something of a Cinderella science over the years, not only for research funding but also for impact in the media. The second of these is changing rapidly - there is hardly a bookshop in the country that doesn’t stock texts on the buzzy stuff like dinosaurs. It’s also fairly easy to find information on volcanoes and early life. But all of these give a rather distorted view of the subject - not that these types of books ever claim to be definitive.
So where to start?
Why not try Martin Redfern’s “The Earth: a very short introduction”. Published in 2003 as part of Oxford University Press’s “very short introduction” series, this little book covers a lot of ground. Some readers may find it a long way removed from rocks -it’s about how the Earth works, from inside out. So this is a great place to start, getting the context for the rocky stuff. Find out about plates, earthquakes, volcanoes and climate change - and the tools earth scientists use to make their discoveries.
If you want to go on from Redfern’s book then I’d recommend dipping into the books recommended on the Leeds Dynamic Earth web-site. But remember that these are text books and may read a bit more techy than the very short introduction.
If you want to find out about rocks and what can be learnt from them then the best bet is to pick up an elementary text book. Through most of the 1990s it seems that every year saw an increasingly glossy text published to support an introductory earth science course run at a US college. These might sound tedious but most are dramatically illustrated and very attractive. The down side is that commonly the books are written for US audiences and therefore draw on a disproportionate number of examples from North America. My recommendation is for “ Geology” by Stan Chernicoff and Donna Whitney . The third edition came out in 2002, published by Houghton Mifflin Co. It manages to draw examples on a global basis and comes with vast amounts of supporting material - teacher guides, web-sites and more.
If your appetite has been whetted for even more earth sciences you might want to link up with others. For people based in the UK, many colleges and universities in the UK run evening classes in geology. Try your local council or town hall for information. The Open University runs courses in earth sciences that build over the years into a degree. If you’re after something less formal, why not check out the Geologists’ Association to contact other’s interested in the earth sciences …. or try the on-line magazine, RockWatch.
Chasing those links - the best option is to pop the words in bold into a search engine such as Google and Robert is your mother’s brother….
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