Exploring Geology

Excellent book packed full of useful information. I'm glad I purchased it for my class!

This text is a radical departure from the standard college text. The "guiding question" approach and the image-intensive layout allows students to explore the content, rather than be led in lock-step with the author. This text is best used as a supportive student resource, rather than a required reading text. Whereas, some college instructors see this text as "dumbed-down", I would argue that it is a great introductory text that will be augmented by more detailed texts in subsequent geology courses. What is my evidence? I discovered that after leaving a copy of "Exploring Geology" in our geology majors study room, our best sophomore through senior students were preferentially selecting this text as a first step in understanding concepts in their more advanced classes.

If only we could learn geology though genuine field experiences with a master scientist, geologist and communicator... This is as close as it gets in a textbook. Based on illustrations of real field locations and enticing geological investigations, this book takes the excitement of field geologists into real-world inquiry of the workings of planet Earth. Since John S. Shelton's classic, "Geology Illustrated," published just over 40 years ago, no textbook has been centered on engaging illustrations and real locations. But Reynolds et al have presented over 2,700 full color images, diagrams and maps. Like most other textbooks, each chapter centers on a skill set or content area of current interest. But this book and its extensive ancillary materials draws the student into the process of investigation. This approach imparts the basic needs of an introductory college course in geology. By bringing the student into the investigative process, geology becomes a spectator sport and the student an eager participant. What is lost? Tedium and frustration. The student need not find her way through long passages of text and jargon. In the field, a geologist is hampered by the inconvenience and expenses of long-distance travel, variable weather conditions, a limited view of and from Earth's surface and a random encounter with each process that is revealed. But not here. In other words, not much of educational value is lost. This is a geology textbook for the 21st century to educate students for a new millenium. Thomas McGuire, Geology/Earth Science Educator & Author