Assembling California
by John McPhee · first published 1993
88% recommend13% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Narrative account of how California's landforms formed, covering plate tectonics, the state's geologic history and scientists' discoveries; vividly written and witty, for non-geologists curious about earth science.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
At various times in a span of fifteen years, John McPhee made geological field surveys in the company of Eldridge Moores, a tectonicist at the University of California at Davis. The result of these trips is Assembling California, a cross-section in human and geologic time, from Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada through the golden foothills of the Mother Lode and across the Great Central Valley to the wine country of the Coast Ranges, the rock of San Francisco, and the San Andreas family of faults. The two disparate time scales occasionally intersect--in the gold disruptions of the nineteenth ce
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I cannot pimp John McPhee's Assembling California [1] highly enough. It is fantastic, and contains a wonderful section about the '89 quake. Really, anything John McPhee writes is worth stopping whatever one is doing and getting started. He's a national…
on “The Whole Problem Is That There Is No Housing Boom In Silicon Valley” ↗"Whistling past the graveyard". There's good stuff in John McPhee's Assembling California [1] about the '89 Loma Prieta earthquake, and about earthquakes in general. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/07/05/specials/mcphee-califo...
on “When, not if: how do San Franciscans live with the threat of the next quake?” ↗I'm in the middle of Assembling California by John McPhee. It's a richly written exploration of where the land that is now California came from and how it got here. It examines the geologic history of the state as well as the discovery of plate…
on “Ask HN: What Books Are You Reading?” ↗John McPhee is an amazing writer. These articles eventually became his book, Assembling California, which in 1998 was republished as part of a collection of his books on geology entitled Annals of the Former World. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annals_of_the_Former_World https://www.amazon.com/dp/0374518734
on “Assembling California (1992)” ↗Perfect timing - I just finished John McPhee’s wonderful “Assembling California”. It goes into quite a bit of detail of how California came together, and includes some history of tectonic plate theory, the gold rush, and quite a lot more.
on “See where your house was 66M years ago” ↗This is rad! I recently read Assembling California by John McPhee[1][2] - highly recommended BTW. Anyway, I was musing that I'd love to see a 3D globe with a time slider that I could play around with and visualize the (projected of course) movement of…
on “Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU” ↗…_deep time_ really means, and - a fascinating look into the inner workings of scientific inquiry and discourse: messy, passionate, exquisite, invaluable Of particular local interest is the must-read Assembling California, the final book collected, which contains a duly famous second by second account of how the Loma Prieta earthquake went down. A nice introduction: https://californiacurated.com/2024/09/06/looking-back-john-m...
on “The Geological Sublime” ↗…each one at least twice. He is, without question, the finest writer of non-fiction I know. Annals, as you may know, was originally published as 4 separate volumes, each covering a particular US region. Assembling California is my absolute favorite McPhee work. I have a layman’s interest in geology and plate tectonics that I developed specifically because of this book.
on “The McPhee method for writing deeply reported nonfiction” ↗I've only read "Assembling California", but I agree. I'll add, though, the dry-ness is offset with a bit of wit. A deadpan humor, almost. I enjoyed it and I'm sure I'll make my way through some more of his works.
on “Built to Last: John McPhee's Way of Seeing” ↗I'm not a geologist but I am interested in the science and have done a bit of reading on it. His books, particularly Assembling California, have always intrigued me. I've always wondered how professional geologists look at them. Given that he spent a lot of time in the company of some highly respected scientists, I imagine he got most of…
on “The McPhee Method” ↗I'm currently reading Assembling California (California resident, so I've seen all the things he discusses in the book, and wondered, like why is Half Dome so big and grey??). Like you I am rapidly developing a layman's interest in plate tectonics.…
on “The McPhee method for writing deeply reported nonfiction” ↗