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How to Read a Rock: Our Planet's Hidden Stories
Rocks are time machines and the keepers of our history. This guide is a geological field trip through Earth’s incredible rock formations and the stories they hold
Like rings on a tree stump hold the history of the tree, the history of Earth is written in its rocks. How to Read a Rock: Our Planet’s Hidden Stories teaches readers to decipher the rocks all around us, from backyard stones to mountain ranges, and trace Earth's history layer by layer.
Spanning from prehistoric Earth’s shifting continents, to contemporary human impact, to the future surfaces of space exploration, the book reviews a remarkable array of topics, including: diamond volcanoes; ancient coastlines, rivers, deserts, and coral reefs; how animals have changed rocks; making of mud; urban rock strata; human-made rocks and minerals; current limestone rock crisis; and technofossils (the footprints humans will leave behind through their material goods).
How to Read a Rock's brilliant imagery captures the power, majesty, and history of the planet. Rocks carry the memories of dinosaur landscapes and vanished oceans; show evidence of the greening of the planet and the effect of natural forces; and convey clues on climate and energy consumption. The book unearths the most fascinating stories rocks can tell us, not only about our past, but how the past can help imagine the future.
Like rings on a tree stump hold the history of the tree, the history of Earth is written in its rocks. How to Read a Rock: Our Planet’s Hidden Stories teaches readers to decipher the rocks all around us, from backyard stones to mountain ranges, and trace Earth's history layer by layer.
Spanning from prehistoric Earth’s shifting continents, to contemporary human impact, to the future surfaces of space exploration, the book reviews a remarkable array of topics, including: diamond volcanoes; ancient coastlines, rivers, deserts, and coral reefs; how animals have changed rocks; making of mud; urban rock strata; human-made rocks and minerals; current limestone rock crisis; and technofossils (the footprints humans will leave behind through their material goods).
How to Read a Rock's brilliant imagery captures the power, majesty, and history of the planet. Rocks carry the memories of dinosaur landscapes and vanished oceans; show evidence of the greening of the planet and the effect of natural forces; and convey clues on climate and energy consumption. The book unearths the most fascinating stories rocks can tell us, not only about our past, but how the past can help imagine the future.
- GenresGeologyNonfictionScience
224 pages, Hardcover
Published October 25, 2022
15 people are currently reading
187 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 26, 2025
scratches that childhood-curiosity-level itch with some absolute banger diagrams and photos
November 19, 2024
So gorgeous, so fascinating, REALLY needed an editor! Some parts read like a first draft or an undergraduate paper:
“The pine tree, in this age-old relationship, is supported by the rock, and gains nutrients from it, while simultaneously breaking it down into sediment, the raw material for future rocks.”
“The mud brick city of Raten in Iran dates back a thousand years, and became a center of trade and manufacture, and a defensive citadel.”
Smithsonian editors! Do something! It’s all chunky like this - so many random commas, so many dependent clauses, so at odds with the principles of clear and concise writing.
Seeing meteorites described as “tanatalising” (a word doc spell-checker would catch this for free..if you ran one! And to think some of us out here are proof-reading our emails!!) and pictures described as “microscop images” is distracting from the content of the book.
Yes, these are all examples I found within 3 minutes just by flipping to random pages.
“The pine tree, in this age-old relationship, is supported by the rock, and gains nutrients from it, while simultaneously breaking it down into sediment, the raw material for future rocks.”
“The mud brick city of Raten in Iran dates back a thousand years, and became a center of trade and manufacture, and a defensive citadel.”
Smithsonian editors! Do something! It’s all chunky like this - so many random commas, so many dependent clauses, so at odds with the principles of clear and concise writing.
Seeing meteorites described as “tanatalising” (a word doc spell-checker would catch this for free..if you ran one! And to think some of us out here are proof-reading our emails!!) and pictures described as “microscop images” is distracting from the content of the book.
Yes, these are all examples I found within 3 minutes just by flipping to random pages.
June 19, 2024
Lovely little collection of digestible overviews of many different core geology topics, written accessibly and eloquently. Each topic (geology of Mercury, mechanical weathering, the Cambrian explosion and its fossil record, etc.) is contained in a two-page, self-contained spread, making it very easy to pick up this book and chip away at it, or pop in and out wherever you like. Great photography and diagrams, useful glossary, and the hardcover edition is satisfyingly sturdy and textured — it looks on the outside like a dry, outdated text you might find in a university’s archived science section, but the truth is far from that.
The greatest joy of all in this book, apart from its survey-style scope, is how smartly organized it is: each section is organized along a timeline, or along a size line from small to large features, or along a distance line from below ground to above ground, from Earth out to the cosmos. The logical progression of ideas creates a big-picture view, helping to cement a collection of facts that, traumatized by dry high school science class, the reader might otherwise gloss over.
This book even discusses climate change from a geologic perspective, projecting the way that human activity will be preserved in the geologic record millennia from now. It’s a refreshing alternate lens.
My only complaint is that many photographs of landmarks and locations have no identifiers, so you don’t know what mountain range or meandering river you looking at.
The greatest joy of all in this book, apart from its survey-style scope, is how smartly organized it is: each section is organized along a timeline, or along a size line from small to large features, or along a distance line from below ground to above ground, from Earth out to the cosmos. The logical progression of ideas creates a big-picture view, helping to cement a collection of facts that, traumatized by dry high school science class, the reader might otherwise gloss over.
This book even discusses climate change from a geologic perspective, projecting the way that human activity will be preserved in the geologic record millennia from now. It’s a refreshing alternate lens.
My only complaint is that many photographs of landmarks and locations have no identifiers, so you don’t know what mountain range or meandering river you looking at.
August 1, 2023
Great introductory-level book. Short and to the point, beautifully done layouts, example photos, and some excellent diagrams.
I particularly liked some details that I didn’t cover in introductory geology - kimberlite volcanic eruptions (where diamonds come from - they don’t happen on earth anymore, perhaps). The discussion of evolution of minerals including plastiglomerate. Interplanetary geology (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jovian moons, Titan) - this chapter is simply great.
This would be a good accompaniment to a tv series.
I particularly liked some details that I didn’t cover in introductory geology - kimberlite volcanic eruptions (where diamonds come from - they don’t happen on earth anymore, perhaps). The discussion of evolution of minerals including plastiglomerate. Interplanetary geology (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jovian moons, Titan) - this chapter is simply great.
This would be a good accompaniment to a tv series.
July 24, 2025
The selection of topics feels disjointed and unfocused. Although the work sets out to serve as an introductory guide to rock geography, it fails to adequately define and explain many essential terms.
March 1, 2023
A fantastic and thorough guide for the armchair geologist! Beautiful production value, as well.
August 10, 2023
Beautifully designed book. Concrete basics on geology and a surprisingly large section on the anthropocene and where geology is going.
September 22, 2023
A very interesting primmer on geology. A good overview of 5he different kinds of rocks and how they were formed.
September 11, 2025
A eminently readable, informative introduction to geology. A ton of color photos enliven what can be dry explanation (and fucking tiny-ass font!).
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews