Annals of the Former World by John McPhee, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $35, ISBN 0374105200
WHAT have glaciers got to do with golf? Why would you see bulldozers creating Scottish-style moraines in places like Louisiana?
Geologist Anita Harris was ready to show writer John McPhee the connection. She described a hummocky landscape in a glaciated corner of Indiana as 鈥渁 good place for a golf course鈥�. McPhee reported her explanation: 鈥淕olf was invented . . . on the glacial topography of Scotland鈥�.
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It all started back in 1978 when McPhee embarked on a journey across North America in the company of various geologists (including Harris) aiming to describe the roadside rocks鈥攁nd to provide a 鈥減icture of the science鈥�.
He succeeded brilliantly, turning on a whole generation of Americans to the rocks on which their country is built and to its geological history. It was McPhee who coined the evocative phrase 鈥渄eep time鈥� to give a sense of the almost astronomical magnitude of the 4.6 billion years of Earth history, which geologists glibly chat about but which means little to mere mortals tied to their three-score years and ten.
You now have a chance to catch up with a bumper edition of McPhee. Annals of the Former World is a reprint of four short books, from the first and best-known journey Basin and Range (Nevada, 1981), through In Suspect Terrain (Appalachians, 1983), across Rising from the Plains (Wyoming, 1986) and now joined by Crossing the Craton (Nebraska and Colorado).
For anyone not familiar with McPhee鈥檚 wonderful reportage and turn of phrase, this is a great opportunity to catch up. I remember the incredulity of an American student a couple of years ago who was almost unable to believe me when I revealed that I hadn鈥檛 heard of, let alone read, McPhee. I have now, and I am eternally grateful for the introuction.