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Suggested Readings for Hisorical Geology
Earth's and Life's Beginnings
- Vital Dust : Life As a Cosmic Imperative by Christian
De Duve (1995)
- How to Build a Habital Planet by Wally Broecker
(1985)
- Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe
by Don Brownlee and Peter Ward (2000)
- The Life and Death of Planet Earth by Don Brownlee and Peter Ward
(2002)
- The Origins of Life : From the Birth of Life to the
Origin of Language by John Maynard Smith, Eors Szathmary, John Maynard
Smith (2000)
- Cradle of Life: The Discovery of Earths Earliest Fossils
by J. William Schopf (1999)
- The Spark of Life: Darwin and the Primeval Soup by Christopher Wills
and Jeffrey Bada (2001)
- Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on
Earth by Andrew H. Knoll (2003)
- The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking (2001)
- From Stone to Star: A View of Modern Geology by Claude Allègre
(1992)
- Origins: Cosmos, Earth, and Mankind by Dominique
Simmonet (1999)
- Atom: An Obyssey from the Big Bang to Life on Earth...and Beyond
by Lawrence Krauss (2001)
- Ancient Earth, Ancient Skies: The Age of the Earth and its Cosmic Surroundings
by G. Brent Dalrymple (2004)
- Aquagenesis: The Origin and Evolution of Life in the Sea by Richard
Ellis (2001)
- Stardust: Supernovae and Life by John and Mary Gribbon (2000)
- Life's Origin: The Beginnings of Biological Evolution edited by William
Schopf (2002)
- The Origins of Life and the Universe by Paul Lurquin (2003)
- The Emergence of Life on Earth by Iris Fry (2000)
- Life : A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth by Richard Fortey (1999)
- Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin by Robert Hazen (2005)
- Evolution: The First Four Billion Years edited by Michael Ruse and Joseph Travis (2009)
Fossils, Life and Evolution
- Wonderful Life : The Burgess Shale and the Nature
of History by Stephen Jay Gould (1989)
- Bully For Brontosaurus: More Reflections In Natural
History by Stephen Jay Gould
- (Pretty much anything by Stephen Jay Gould would tie
in to this class.)
- The Diversity of Life by Edward O. Wilson
- Trilobite : Eyewitness to Evolution by Richard
Fortey (2000)
- Life : A Natural History of the First Four Billion
Years of Life on Earth by Richard Fortey (1999)
- At the Water's Edge : Fish With Fingers, Whales With
Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to Sea by Carl Zimmer,
Carl Dennis Buell (1998)
- Taking Wing : Archaeopteryx and the Evolution of Bird
Flight by Pat Shipman (1998)
- The Crucible of Creation : The Burgess Shale and the
Rise of Animals by Simon Conway Morris (1998)
- Reinventing Darwin : The Great Debate at the High
Table of Evolutionary Theory by Niles Eldredge
- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
- Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins (1996)
- Future Evolution by Peter Douglas Ward and Alexis Rockman (2001)
- The Garden of Ediacara: Discovering the First Complex Life by Mark
A. S. McMenamin (1998)
- Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea by Carl Zimmer (2001)
- No Turning Back: The Life and Death of Animal Species by Richard
Ellis (2004)
- King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon by David Montgomery
(2004)
- Discovering Fossil Fishes by John Maisey (1996)
- The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution by Richard
Dawkins (2004)
- Beasts of Eden: Walking Whales, Dawn Horses, and Other Enigmas of Mammal
Evolution by David Rains Wallace (2004)
- Fossils: The key to the Past by Richard Fortey (2002)
- In the Blink of an Eyeby Andrew Parker (2003)
- The Ghosts of Evolution: Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other
Ecological Anachronisms by Connie Barlow (2000)
- Sea Dragons: Predators of the Prehistoric Seas by Richard Ellis (2003)
- The Monkey's Bridge" Mysteries of Evolution in Central America
by David Rains Wallace (1997)
Dinosaurs and Extinctions
- Rivers in Time : The Search for Clues to Earth's Mass
Extinctions by Peter Douglas Ward
- On Methuselah's Trail : Living Fossils and the Great
Extinctions by Peter Douglas Ward (1992)
- The End of Evolution : A Journey in Search of Clues
to the Third Mass Extinction Facing Planet Earth by Peter Ward (1994)
- Extinction : Bad Genes or Bad Luck? by David M.
Raup (1991)
- The End of the Dinosaurs : Chicxulub Crater and Mass
Extinctions by Charles Frankel
- The Mistaken Extinction : Dinosaur Evolution and the
Origin of Birds by Lowell Dingus, Timothy Rowe (1998)
- The Dinosaur Heresies : New Theories Unlocking the
Mystery of the Dinosaurs and Their Extinction by Robert T. Bakker
- Night Comes to the Cretaceous : Comets, Craters, Controversy,
and the Last Days of the Dinosaurs by James Lawrence Powell
- The Scientific American Book of Dinosaurs by Gregory
s Paul (Editor) (2001)
- T. Rex and the Crater of Doom
by Walter Alvarez (1997)
- Dinosaur Tracks and Other Fossil Footprints of Europe
by Martin Lockley and Christian Meyer (2000)
- Terrible Lizard: The First Dinosaur Hunters and the
Birth of a New Science by Deborah Cadbury
- The Bonehunters' Revenge : Dinosaurs, Greed, and the
Greatest Scientific Feud of the Gilded Age by David Rains Wallace
- The Gilded Dinosaur : The Fossil War Between E.D.
Cope and O.C. Marsh and the Rise of American Science by Mark Jaffe
- Dinosaurs of the Flaming Cliffs by Ed Heck (Illustrator),
Michael J. Novacek (1996)
- Digging Dinosaurs : The Search That Unraveled the
Mystery of Baby Dinosaurs by John R. Horner, et al (1988)
- Dinosaur Lives by John
Horner and Edwin Dobb (1997)
- dinosaurs Under the Big Sky
by Jack Horner (2001)
- Gorgon: Paleontology, Obsession, and the Greatest
Catastrophe in Earth History by Peter D. Ward
(2004)
- When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Extinction of
All Time by Michael Benton (2003)
- Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin (2008)
Ice Ages
- The Ice Finders : How a Poet, a Professor, and a Politician
Discovered the Ice Age by Edmund Blair Bolles
- Ice Ages : Solving the Mystery by John Imbrie,
Kathrine Palmer Imbrie, Katherine P. Imbrie
- The Two-Mile Time Machine by Richard B. Alley
(2000)
- The Little Ice Age : How Climate Made History 1300-1850
by Brian M. Fagan (2000)
- The Call of Distant Mammoths : Why the Ice Age Mammals
Disappeared by Peter Douglas Ward (1997)
- Mammoth: The Resurrection of an Ice Age Giant
by Richard Stone
- After the Ice Age : The Return of Life to Glaciated
North America by E. C. Pielou
- The Ice Chronicles: The Quest to Understand Global Climate Change
by Paul Andrew Mayewski, et al (2002)
- Cataclysms on the Columbia : A Layman's Guide to the
Features Produced by the Catastrophic Bretz Floods in the Pacific Northwest
by John Eliot Allen, et al
- Glacial Lake Missoula and its Humongous Floods by David Alt (2001)
- Snowball Earth: The Story of the Great Global Catastrophe that Spawned
Life as We Know It by Gabrielle Walker (2003)
Geologic History
- Earth: An Intimate History by Richard Fortey (2004)
- In Suspect Terrain by John McPhee
- Assembling California by John McPhee
- Rising from the Plains by John McPhee
- Basin and Range by John McPhee
- Annals of the Former World by John A. McPhee (This
one is a compilation of the previous 4 John McPhee Books.)
- The Control of Natureby
John McPhee (1989)
- Time Machines : Scientific Explorations in Deep Time
by Peter Douglas Ward (1998)
- In Search of Deep Time : Beyond the Fossil Record
to a New History of Life by Henry Gee
- The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North
America and Its Peoples by Tim Flannery (2001)
- Devil in the Mountain: A Search for the Origin of
the Andes by Simon Lamb (2004)
Misc. (Mostly History of Geology)
- The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and
the Birth of Modern Geology by Simon Winchester (2001)
- The Dating Game : One Man's Search for the Age of
the Earth by Cherry Lewis (2000)
- Aeons: The search for the Beginning of Time
by Martin Gorst (2001)
- Plate Tectonics: An Insider's History of the Modern
Theory of the Earth by Naomi Oreskes (2001)
- Melting the Earth : The History of Ideas on Volcanic
Eruptions by Haraldur Sigurdsson (1999)
- Salt: A World History
by Mark Kurlansky (2002)
- Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded by Simon
Winchester (2003)
- The Man Who Found Time: James Hutton and the Discovery
of the Earth's Antiquity by Jack Repcheck (2003)
- Ages in Chaos: James Hutton and the Discovery of Deep
Time by Stephen Baxter (2003)
- The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science,
Sainthood, and the Humble Genius who Discoverd a New History of the Earth
by Alan Cutler (2003)
- Naked Earth: The New Geophysics
by Shawna Vogel (1996)
Other Books of Interest (but NOT Suitable for the Book
Review Project)
- Common Fossil Plants of Western North America
by William Tidwell (1998)
- West Coast Fossils: A Guide to the Ancient Life of
Vancouver Island by Rolf Ludvigsen and Graham
Beard (1997)
- Life in Stone: A Natural History of British Columbia's
Fossils by Rolf Ludvigsen (1996)
- No Stone Unturned : Reasoning About Rocks and Fossils
by E. K. Peters (1991)
- Ice Age mammals of North America: A Guide to the Big,
the Hairy, and the Bizarre by Ian M. Lange (2002)
- A Short History of Planet Earth : Mountains, Mammals,
Fire and Ice (Wiley Popular Series) by J. D. MacDougall (1996)
- Stepping Stones: The Making of Our Homeword
by Stephen Drury (1999)
Last Updated
Tuesday, February 10, 2009