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Rising from the Plainsis John McPhee's third book on geology and geologists. FollowingBasin and RangeandIn Suspect Terrain, it continues to present a cross section of North America along the fortieth parallela series gathering under the overall titleAnnals of the Former World. John McPheeis the author of more than 25 books, includingAnnals of the Former World, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction in 1999. He has been a staff writer atThe New Yorkersince 1965 and lives in Princeton, New Jersey. McPhee'sEncounters with the ArchdruidandThe Curve of Binding Energywere both nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science. If you like to read about geology, John McPhee'sRising for Plainsis an indispensable text on the subject. If, on the other hand, you are not much engaged by the spatial complexities of the science, you could miss a richness if human history that has its place among the strata described. Sometimes it is said of geologists that they reflect in their professional styles the sort of country in which they grew up. Nowhere could that be more true than in the life of a geologist born in the center of Wyoming and raised on an isolated ranch. This is the story of that ranch, soon after the turn of the century, and of the geologist who grew up there, at home with the composition of the high country in the way that someone growing up in a coastal harbor would be at home with the vagaries of the sea. Rising from the Plainsis McPhee's third book on geology and geologists. FollowingBasin and RangeandIn Suspect Terrain, it continues to present a cross section of North America along the fortieth parallela series gathering under the overall titleAnnals of the Former World. "McPhee rides shotgun across Wyoming in a four-wheel-drive Bronco while the geologist David Love steers, lectures, and reminisces . . . This instructive account of the geologic West and the frontier West is a delight."Evan S. Connell, The New York Times Book Review "Mr. McPhee has created a styleblending detailed reporting with a novelistic sense of narrativeand a standard that have influenced a whole generation of journalists."Timothy Bay,The Baltimore Sun "McPhee offers a striking picture of the Rawlins Uplift, the stratified protrusion that rises from the Plains providing a rare chance to 'see' and sense 260 million years of layering, from the Archean eon to the Miocene . . . Much of the book is given over to descriptions of the Rocky ranges, their form and formation, and to comparisons with other geologically interesting areas. In a style that is uniquely McPhee, readers get to know the landscapes as they get to know those who study them: intimately. This makes it a very personal book."Peter I. Rose,The Christian Science Monitor(Eastern edition) "Although it stands well on its own, this book can be viewed as a continuation of McPhee'sBasin and RangeandIn Suspect Terrain. As in those earlier works, the central theme of this book is the geology of an area near Interstate 80, this time the Rocky Mountains and adjacent terrain in Wyoming. McPhee skillfully weaves together the personal history of Rocky Mountain geologist David Love and his family with the geological history of the region, chronicling both the story of pioneering homesteaders and that of ancient seas, volcanoes, and episodes of mountain building. He also details the search for resources and the environmental effect of their discovery, as well as the inner workings of geology."Joseph Hannibal,Library Journal

John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. The same year he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with FSG, and soon followed with The Headmaster (1966), Oranges (1967), The Pine Barrens (1968), A Roomful of Hovings and Other Profiles (collection, 1969), The Crofter and the Laird (1969), Levels of the Game (1970), Encounters with the Archdruid (1972), The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed (1973), The Curve of Binding Energy (1974), Pieces of the Frame (collection, 1975), and The Survival of the Bark Canoe (1975). Both Encounters with the Archdruid and The Curve of Binding Energy were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science.

“Mr. McPhee has created a style--blending detailed reporting with a novelistic sense of narrative--and a standard that have influenced a whole generation of journalists.” --Timothy Bay, The Baltimore Sun “McPhee rides shotgun across Wyoming in a four-wheel-drive Bronco while the geologist David Love steers, lectures, and reminisces....This instructive account of the geologic West and the frontier West is a delight.”—Evan S. Connell, The New York Times Book Review

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Rising From The Plains
This is about high-country geology and a Rocky Mountain regional geologist. I raise that semaphore here at the start so no one will feel misled by an opening passage in which a slim young woman who is not in any sense a geologist steps down from a train in Rawlins, Wyoming, in order to go north by stagecoach into country that was still very much the Old West. She arrived in the autumn of 1905, when she was twenty-three. Her hair was so blond it looked white. In Massachusetts, a few months before, she had graduated from Wellesley College and had been awarded a Phi Beta Kappa key, which now hung from a chain around her neck. Her field was classical studies. In addition to her skills in Latin and Greek, she could handle a horse expertly, but never had she made a journey into a region as remote as the one that lay before her.Meanwhile, Rawlins surprised her: Rawlins, where shootings had once been so frequent that there seemed to be--ascitizens put it--"a man for breakfast every morning"; Rawlins, halfway across a state that was spending per annum far more to kill wolves and coyotes than to support its nineteen-year-old university. She had expected a "backward" town, a "frontier" town, a street full of badmen like Big Nose George, the road agent, the plunderer of stagecoaches, who signed his hidden-treasure maps "B. N. George." Instead, this October evening, she was met at the station by a lackey with a handcart, who wheeled her luggage to the Ferris Hotel. A bellboy took over, his chest a constellation of buttons. The place was three stories high, and cozy with steam heat. The lights were electric. There were lace curtains. What does it matter, she reflected, if the pitchers lack spouts?Copyright © 1986 by John McPhee

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Rising from the Plains

Rising from the Plains

0374520658

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