READING THE ROCKS: The Autobiography of the Earth

In this engrossing volume of pop-geology, geologist Bjornerud chronicles the watersheds in Earth's history from the primordial supernova that seeded the nascent solar nebula to the man-made cataclysms of global warming and habitat destruction, visiting along the way such "near-death experiences" as the Moon's apparent birth from a collision between Earth and a wandering planet, the "Snowball Earth" period when the oceans froze over, and the asphyxiating "Permian-Triassic oxygen crisis," when 90% of the world's species died out in less than a million years. Adopting something of a Gaian perspective of Earth as a self-regulating superorganism, the author attributes the planet's stability in the face of upheaval to dynamic mechanisms that cycle elements back and forth among the atmosphere, the oceans, the biosphere and Earth's crust and interior. Bjornerud conveys these lessons through a stimulating introduction to the geological principles by which Earth's past is teased out of obscure but telling details of rocks and fossils. Her thematically structured chapters, reminiscent of Stephen Jay Gould's essays, are written in an expansive, erudite style ranging from science to philosophy, history and the occasional admonition against humanity's reckless remaking of the environment "like spoiled children." (May)