This book is by far the best history of geology available. It begins with the Greeks and ends with continental drift and plate tectonics. Gabriel Gohau also looks at the early theories of the formation of the world and then moves to philosophical debates over mountains, fossils, the Flood, volcanoes, and cycles of earth history that preoccupied the geologists and biologists of the late eighteenth and nineteenth century. After discussing the late nineteenth-century consolidation of theories about the mechanisms of changes in the earth, he concludes with an account of twentieth century geology's scientific revolution.

"Gohau explains, rather than recounts. Readers will be well-served by the author's care in setting the broader intellectual context that surrounded an idea or a person. Informative and stimulating at the same time...the book deserves a wide audience." - Earth Sciences History

"Designed primarily with the student and general reader in mind...this...admirably compact and informative...account of the history of geology merits the attention of scholars as well. It succeeds both as a concise introduction to the subject and as an interpretive essay on some of its main themes." - Isis