Review
From the book jacket: The face of the earth, crisscrossed by chains of mountains like the scars of old wounds, has changed and changed again over billions of years, and the testament
of the remote past is all around us. In this book Richard Fortey teaches us how
to read its character, laying out the dominions of the world before us. He shows
how human culture and natural history – even the shape of cities – are rooted in
this deep geological past ..... Nothing in this book is at rest. The
surface of the earth dilates and collapses; seas and mountains rise and fall;
continents move.
Comment: "It should be difficult to lose a mountain, but it happens all
the time around the Bay of Naples." Thus Fortey begins
Earth: An
Intimate History, described by reviewers as 'a tale of high drama', 'a
treasure-house of...
Beyond the Book
Richard Fortey is a senior paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in
London.
Life was short-listed for the Rhône-Poulenc Prize in 1998,
Trilobite! was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2001, and
The
Hidden Landscape was awarded the Natural World Book of the Year in 1993. He
was Collier Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and Technology at
the Institute of Advanced Studies in 2002 and is now a Fellow of the Royal
Society.
