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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Nov 2004, 448 pages
Paperback:
Nov 2005, 448 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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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 mind-expanding lore', 'enthralling', 'a dazzling voyage of
discovery' - and that's just a small taste of the glowing praise for Fortey, whom
the Economist describes as 'the Raymond Chandler of science writing' and then goes
on to say, 'his prose is angelic, his phrases well-turned. . . . And though
Earth is no murder story, it is a mystery book and, in its own way, a
thriller.'
This review
first ran in the January 18, 2006
issue of BookBrowse Recommends.
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