I second (or third) the recommendation that you read "Annals of the Former
World." Most of it was previously published in book form (after being
printed in The New Yorker, which I also recommend) as "Basin and Range,"
"Rising from the Plains," "In Suspect Terrain," and "Assembling California"
before the parts were assembled into "Annals of the Former World," which
also includes a fifth part on the stable interior craton of the US. Anything
by McPhee is a good read. He's always been published by Farrar, Straus, and
Giroux, and, last I knew, all of his twenty-five or so books were still in
print in both hard and soft covers--one does not abandon a publisher like
that.
After reading "Annals," one become sort of blase about long time
periods, as McPhee throws around things like twelve hundred million years
and five-hundred-million-year unconformaties. From "Assembling California":
"For an extremely large percentage of the history of the world, there as no
California. . . . Fifty thousand major earthquakes will move something about
a hundred miles. After there was nothing, earthquakes brought things from
far parts of the world to fashion Calilfornia."
An excellent way to learn about the geology of the United States. Don't
be a wimp. Millions of sixth-graders have read Harry Potter books with more
pages.
I also recommend "Earth: An Intimate History" by Richard Fortey as a
good popular introduction to geology. -- Mixon
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