Periodically, I review books here. Usually, I do them one at a time, but at this point, I’ve been delinquent enough in my book reporting that I’ve got a big backlog. So I intend to just bomb through them, clearing out my backlog of unblogged books in one fell swoop post. This consolidation is probably … Read more
Last week, I got a great new book from Amazon. I had pre-ordered it months ago, so when it finally arrived, I was delighted, and dove right in. Within 24 hours, I had finished it. It’s the story of how my friend Forrest Pritchard re-made his family’s farm into a sustainable enterprise by going organic. … Read more
The week before last, on the flight home from Texas, I finished reading Dark Star Safari, Paul Theroux’s 2004 account of traveling overland through Africa from Cairo to Cape Town. I’ve enjoyed Theroux’s traveling writing very much over the years, and although he’s written some great novels (I’m thinking of Mosquito Coast), most of them … Read more
A new video book review! Under discussion today are two new books from Mountain Press: Geology Underfoot Along Colorado’s Front Range by Lon Abbott and Terri Cook, and Arizona Rocks! by T. Scott Bryan. Enjoy! [youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n82EJwZ6c_o”]
Previously, I’ve hinted that I was working on a top secret special project for Pearson Education. Now that the books have been published, I wanted to take a moment to discuss the details of the project. In the newest editions of both Earth: An introduction to Physical Geology (Tarbuck, Lutgens, & Tasa, 2014) and Foundations of … Read more
Callan & his students visit an outcrop on the Icefields Parkway in Alberta, showing a variety of white veins cutting dark rock.
I finished reading Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel Flight Behavior over the weekend. It’s certainly cut from the same cloth as Kingsolver’s other work. If you liked Prodigal Summer and her many Arizona novels, you’ll probably like this one, too. Similarities include: beautiful writing, a focus on the relationships women have to their families, friends, and … Read more
I got The Planets from the Fort Valley library a few weeks ago, because Dava Sobel wrote it. She wrote the excellent Longitude, and that was enough for me. Also, I’ve been really into astronomy lately. Watching the meteor shower earlier this week was stunning, and I loved training my binoculars on nebulae and stars … Read more
The cover story in the November issue of GSA Today was by David Montgomery, MacArthur “genius” award winner and author of Dirt. Montgomery has a new book out on creationism and “flood geology,” and the article is a précis of the historical roots of creationism that appears in that book. The article is titled “The … Read more
Callan reviews a new book by Doug Macdougall: “Why Geology Matters.”