Title: A Brief History of Earth: Four Billions Years in Eight Chapters

Author: Andrew H. Knoll

Publisher: Custom House 2021

Genre: Nonfiction - Geology

Pages: 272

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Summer Reading Challenge

How well do you know the ground beneath your feet? 

Odds are, where you’re standing was once cooking under a roiling sea of lava, crushed by a towering sheet of ice, rocked by a nearby meteor strike, or perhaps choked by poison gases, drowned beneath ocean, perched atop a mountain range, or roamed by fearsome monsters. Probably most or even all of the above. 

The story of our home planet and the organisms spread across its surface is far more spectacular than any Hollywood blockbuster, filled with enough plot twists to rival a bestselling thriller. But only recently have we begun to piece together the whole mystery into a coherent narrative. Drawing on his decades of field research and up-to-the-minute understanding of the latest science, renowned geologist Andrew H. Knoll delivers a rigorous yet accessible biography of Earth, charting our home planet's epic 4.6 billion-year story. Placing twenty first-century climate change in deep context, A Brief History of Earth is an indispensable look at where we’ve been and where we’re going.

I grabbed this slim nonfiction book on a whim while creating the geology unit for coop. I love a good natural sciences book and this one seemed right up my alley. We get to start at the beginning and follow the development of the earth through time all the way until today. Each chapter is organized around a stage of development. Much of the information included was already know to me, but I did find myself very attentive to the complete story. Knoll occasionally swerves into very hard science, but overall this is a very readable text. I only wish that the pictures had been in color. Black and white is so hard especially when it comes to looking at rocks.

Next up on the TBR pile: