In his 1993 book, Assembling California, John McPhee accomplishes the onerous task of explaining the fluidity of our planet using the diverse topology of California as a backdrop. With a definite command over the understanding of the geological world, he introduces the unsuspecting reader to the prehistoric world, where Kazakhstan was adjacent to England and India to Africa. While familiarizing the reader to the basic principles of plate tectonics, he also introduces them to geological jargon as he guides them to the world as we know it.
Not only does McPhee take the readers through the rollercoaster of processes that have shaped the present world, he also gives the readers a glimpse of the initial upheaval that the theory of plate tectonics brought to the field of geology, how mounting evidence helped get this theory the traction that it enjoys right now.
I particularly enjoyed him orienting the reader into the scientific techniques used for measurement of the slow changes in the topography of the land that seem stationary to human perception. Using the paddy fields to identify the contours of the Great Central Valley in California, or placing guides in a straight line to track the curvature of the San Andreas fault, examples so real, their implications so real, that it aids trusting this science and its validity.
McPhee takes his readers to the ocean floor. It is living and it is breathing. There are the expanding centers, the ocean floor disappearing in trenches. New crust is forming, old crust is disappearing. At times, rubbing of ocean plates with continental plates leads to the ocean crust, ophiolite making its way to the land. The net results, mountain ranges like Sierra Nevada, islands like Cyprus.
Written in some parts as a travel book of sorts, McPhee paints such vivid images that takes the reader from the old mines of Cyprus to the foot of the Acropolis in Macedonia. Rather than a drab series of events, McPhee weaves the geological process with the historical relevance. Maybe Cyprus was the source of the copper for the brass armor mentioned in Illiad.
Using the Great California Gold Rush as an example, McPhee not only presents the scientific theory and the processes that explain gold deposits in the Sierra Nevada, but also the historical sequence of formation of the range itself as an island-arc collided into the North American Placte.
Speaking of the lives of men who came form far for the California Gold, he brings us face to face with the doings of men. Hydraulic drilling of valleys, sediment erosion form the mountains hundreds of miles down in the Bay area, flooding of Scaramento; all of these examples lay the foundation for the most powerful line in the book. “Man is a geologic agent”.
McPhee’s presentation of our knowledge of the past and the future of San Andreas Fault is chilling. Yes. At one point in history, Los Angeles was floating towards the North American Plate, and at some future point, it will be adjacent to San Francisco, yet again separated from the continental United States of America.
I think in Moore, McPhee finds a subject so fascinated with the physical world, that it lends a certain passion obvious in the narrative. The reader gets to know Moore as a child helping his had mine out ore, as an adolescent swearing off rocks and mines, as an adult realizing his passion for the mountains, his excitement when he figures out the origin of the Sierra Nevada and ultimately his prediction of an Appalchain like range being formed in the Central Valley in California as we speak.
McPhee’s treatment of earthquake spread so is pretty that one almost doesn’t even realize that they are learning so much. Laden with real experiences of the people who experienced it, McPhee takes the readers from the epicenter to hundreds of miles away, at each place, people experiencing different levels of destruction. All of this eventually leads to our understanding why cities built on landfills are so prone to destruction then the land nearby.
With a very clear narrative, as McPhee takes the reader on a whirlwind journey through time, the jumping back and forth between different times is disorienting. While I appreciate his providing a historical perspective of human dealing with the nature, whether it is the California Gold Rush, or the colonization of Cyprus for its copper, I find my trip across the globe to be very random.
It almost seems as if the individual chapters were written independent of each other, and then just rearranged together for this book.
For a book on Geology, I found the lack of pictures and maps rather surprising. Having read enough about these rocks, I think I would not be able to make a wild guess next time I am in Death Valley. I think illustrations of the movements of plates, the maps of the world of the past, of Protopangea, of Pangea would have made the changes easier to follow. McPhee relies heavily on the imagination of the reader, which I think might be doing injustice to some.
McPhee’s references to history at times seems just out of place. The mythical utopia of California, east of West Indies, discovered in 1508 has nothing to do with California. Was the brass in the mythological Illiad from Cyprus. It is as good as anyone’s guess. I mean, I can see how he is trying to keep the reader interested by throwing in random facts or suppositions, but I find it distracting and irrelevant.
My biggest grievance with the book lies with the odd distribution of its pace. The first hundred pages introduce the reader to so many new concepts and the second half just builds on them. I would have preferred for McPhee to throw in breathers, or reiterate the same concepts multiple times, so that the reader does not feel overwhelmed or disoriented as he is driven from one time frame to another, from one part of the world to another.
As I finish the book, one last thought. I am glad these events occur over millions of years. Forget the destruction by caused earthquakes or changing sea levels, worse still, would be the governments of the world fighting with one another for land.
In conclusion, I laud the author for this book. As I put the book down, I have a greater appreciation for the complexity of inanimate earth, not just the biological world. I would recommend this book to most readers with a warning though. This is not a light read for the beach, rather, have Wikipedia at hand to get the most of this book.
