Geology of National Parks

Perfect, great condition, just what I needed. Great seller, fast shipping. I would recommend to others.

I teach a college-level course in the Geology of National Parks and Monuments. Finding a textbook suitable for such a course has always been a problem, but I've used various editions of this book for at least a couple decades. It's a very poor choice for my needs, but I've never found anything more suitable. For example, my course is about Parks and Monuments, but this book only concerns parks. Another thing is that this book attempts to cover all national parks, but my course only concerns the National Parks of the western United States. In the sections about the parks I cover, this book attempts to cover almost everything, but I only look at selected subjects. Well, everything seems imperfect for my needs, but that's not the fault of the book. If I get away from my specific needs, this book isn't bad at all. It outlines the geology of the parks as best as might be expected in the space available. I find it tough reading in that each park is covered by a different author or set of authors so the writing styles and geological styles and depth of coverage are glaringly different with the different parks. Well that's what compilation books are. A beginning geology text is woven through the book and can be quite useful to the reader, if the reader is adept at using the index. For example, if a reader is interested in igneous rocks he/she can go into the index and can find numerous places throughout the book which discuss various aspects of this subject. It's imperfect, but someone can become reasonably conversant. Also, an index is provided if you tend to stumble over technical jargon. I have very mixed feelings about this book. It's a very imperfect tome, yet it's really not a bad book at all. I could easily recommend it as a starting place for someone interested in the Geology of National Parks. Once started, an overwhelming amount of information is available in the literature and on the internet. It's worth a try, if you can get around the high cost of the book. Gary Peterson

This is an excellent textbook of geology and some history of our national parks. The text is organized by each park within geographic regions. This is great and helps one to read up on a specific park BEFORE visiting it so as to get the most out of the trip. The layout, font size and pictures are great. The explanation of the geology behind the landscape is just beautiful and quite meaty. There is a CD that comes with the text and this is where I have a problem. The CD has great pictures of the parks but that is it. It would have been great if the CD came with some interactive stuff. With the book size being formidible it would have been great to have a folded handout along with the CD so that one could actually use it on a field trip. But all in all this is an excellent book and very useful to a non-geologist like myself. I would have given it a 5-star except that there is no handy cutout that effectively summarizes the book for use in the field.

"Geology of the National Parks" is filled to the brim with information, but it is less a textbook than a nice desk reference.The book organizes the national parks according to their major geographical features. This works, but since many parks have the same or similar features, the same information is often repeated. Furthermore, the information on the parks is extremely detailed and extends beyond the geographic features that the book is organized by. A straight geographic or alphabetical ordering might have worked better. The index is adequate, though, which make up for this somewhat.The writing is clear and understandable, though packed with information. If there is a geological process in a NP, it is in this book. The only problem is that the student never really gets an idea of geological processes on a continental or global scale because of the organization. Each park comes off as isolated.Still, if you are an amateur geologist who enjoys the national parks, this is a great book to have in your collection. It really makes a person appreciate how unique and special each park is. But any professor looking to use this as a text really needs address the material like they would a GEOL 101 course and use the parks to address these larger geological processes. A biology or chemistry teacher wouldn't teach from an encyclopedia of those disciplines and the same care needs to be taken with this text.

Harris et al. have produced a weighty tome that will appeal to the geologist on vacation who wants to get more out of the National Park experience. There are plenty of maps and cross-sections to interest the informed reader, particularly the increasing number of retired geologists. Unfortunately there is not enough in the way of more modern data such as reflection seismic, potential fields or, surprisingly, geothermal data. Also, considering the price, more color satellite images would have been appreciated. One point: I am not sure how much this book would appeal to the lay reader, whose enjoyment of the National Park system would be considerably enhanced by knowledge of the underlying geologic processes that produced the beautiful scenery.