Product Description
From the outwash plains of Brooklyn to Indiana’s drifted diamonds and gold In Suspect Terrain is a narrative of the earth, told in four sections of equal length, each in a different way reflecting the three others—a biography; a set piece about a fragment of Appalachian landscape in illuminating counterpoint to the human history there; a modern collision of ideas about the origins of the mountain range; and, in contrast, a century-old collision of ideas about the existence of the Ice Age. The central figure is Anita Harris, an internationally celebrated geologist who went into her profession to get out of a Brooklyn ghetto. The unifying theme is plate tectonics—here concentrating on the acceptance that all aspects of the theory do not universally enjoy. As such, In Suspect Terrain is a report from the rough spots at the front edge of a science.

Amazon.com Review
The Delaware Water Gap, where the Delaware River cuts through the Appalachian Mountains, is a bucolic and peaceful landscape perhaps best known as the setting of Edward Hicks's famous painting, The Peaceable Kingdom. However, the calm landscape conceals the tortuous geological history of this region and the equally complex debates concerning the geological past of the eastern United States.

In Basin and Range, McPhee traveled across the United States with a strong proponent of plate tectonics. In this volume, he travels over some of the same terrain with Anita G. Harris, a geologist who questions the ability of plate tectonics to completely explain the geology of this part of the world. As always, McPhee conveys the brilliant enthusiasms of those he profiles and the engaging complexity of the disciplines within which they work.

This is the second of four books on North American geology by McPhee, collectively entitled Annals of the Former World. The other volumes are Basin and Range, Rising from the Plains, and Assembling California.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 8 reviews)

Check the page count

We have two copies of this book. Each has less than the guaranteed 210 pages. Caveat emptor.
September 09, 2006

McPhee can even make Anita Harris interesting

McPhee can do it all: explain a complex scientific concept in clean, clear prose; perfectly divine and express the poetic nature underlying seemingly mundane geologic features; conjure up vivid panoramas of worlds lost deep in geologic time; and, no less amazingly, make us actually believe that we even personally like the brilliant, but crass, Doctor Anita Harris! Like Basin and Range, and La Place de la Concorde Suisse, very well written and wonderfully told.
September 25, 2005

Terrain or terrane

This book is filled with scientific terms straining the general reader's capacity to follow the narrative. Wonderful, clear-speaking John McPhee's lurching off into geology is analogous to Doris Lessing losing her readers in science fiction yarns. Fortunately most of us have been to New York City or have spent time traveling Route 80. Changes do not come in a slow steady march in geology. Geologic time is punctuated by catastrophes. Geology repeats itself. Geology is named for Gaea, daughter of Chaos says McPhee's informant, Anita Harris. The right bedrock, the right angle of deep caused the pond of boulders in Hickory State Park, Pennsylvania to be formed. Geologists are detectives. Road cuts are incredibly useful to them. Without them they are reduced to drilling holes straight down and studying streams. Streams and rivers form later than rock. The limit of glaciation in New York City is reflected in the subway system. The book is rich and informative. It is organized around the career of and the author's travels with Anita Harris, a wholly reasonable focus for the study.
July 19, 2003

Fire and Ice......

In Suspect Terrain by John McPhee details the geology of Interstate 80 from the Delaware Water Gap to the state of Indiana. Primarily concerned with the formation of the Appalachians, the intrusion and withdrawal of vast inland seas, and the impact of widespread glaciation, the book introduces us to Anita Harris, a geologist who is less enamored of plate tectonic theory than most. Though far from discounting the theory altogether, Harris, through McPhee, displays for the reader several "tectonic" inconsistencies prevalent in the Appalachian region.

As in Basin and Range, a previous work, McPhee brings a traveler's commentary and an historian's insight to the scientific discussion making geology, perhaps, more enticing to the layman than anyone who has come before him. Indeed, were all science so artfully presented us commonfolk might have a better grasp of that which can often confuse and intimidate. I thoroughly enjoyed In Suspect Terrain and look eagerly forward to other McPhee efforts.
June 20, 2003

state of the art - now 20 years ago

This is an excellent book, in which McPhee follows an original and stolid geologist on her job and records her musings and concerns with her science. It is written in absolutely luminous prose, with a clarity that can only be called perfect. As he travels with the geologist, ideas keep cropping up that are explained and examined, sometimes adding historical context, such as the long passages on Agassiz. I enjoyed the flow of the narrative and it held my interest completely, indeed I was in awe of his writing talent.

In my reading, there were two principal scientific ideas. First, McPhee lets the geologist question the pervasive acceptance of plate tectonics, that is, how it is now the first explanation that geologists seek to advance, which may mean that they do not seek alternative explanations when appropriate. More specifically, the geologist accepts the theory for oceanic plates, but not the land/continental versions. She chafes against the preference of many young geologists to create micro-plates for every new unexplained phenomenon, a kind of reductionism that may be similar to that used by proponents of "heavenly spheres" to explain the motions of the planets prior to Kepler and Newton. Second, McPhee goes over the notion of glacial ice flows and what they explain about the current landscapes. As I was quite ignorent of these theories except in the crudest outline, I learned a lot from this. What I cannot do is evaluate whether, after 20 years, this book is outdated, which it almost certainly is.

Beyond those 2 issues, the reader also gets to know how geologists work and think, which was equally fascinating and pleasurable for me. THere are long passages on a technique that the geologist developed - using the teeth of long-disappeared marine worms to date and evaluate the conditions of the sediments in which they appear - that are clearly explained. Nonetheless, the level of the reasoning and vocabulary can at times be technical and was sometimes beyond my level: those "teeth" above are called conodonts, which I happened to know about from a Gould essay; otherwise, I would have found use of that word confusing, as I did many others that are explained perhaps once. THat made the book quite dense and necessary to re-read in certain sections, which is not a criticism so much as an indication of the experience the reader should expect.

Warmly recommended.
June 20, 2003

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

Rising From The Plains
by John McPhee

Basin and Range
by John McPhee

Assembling California
by John McPhee

Annals of the Former World
by John McPhee

Coming into the Country
by John McPhee