Understanding Earth

This is a comprehensive geology book with good graphics that illustrate hard to understand concepts. This edition is almost exactly the same as the 2003 fourth edition. However be aware that the chapters are in a different order in the third edition

This 4th edition of Understanding Earth by Press, Siever, Grotzinger and Jordan is an up-to-the-minute comprehensive review of the history of Earth from the beginning to the present as geologists understand it. It contains 567 pages plus glossary, index and appendices.

The textbook is very well written and beautifully and effectively illustrated. Critical topics, especially plate tectonics, are thoroughly discussed. The review questions at the end of the chapters are very useful for recitations and laboratories. The glossary is also helpful, but not all bolded terms in the text (such as theory and hypothesis) are located in the glossary. The appendices include mineral identification tables, unit conversions, and information on topographic and geologic maps. The third edition has been extensively reorganized and most of the changes are definite improvements of an already superior textbook. One negative point: one of my students had a malfunctioning CD in her copy of the third edition.

I took a base-level intro course on geology and we used this book, and I found it to be very straight forward and casual. The soft cover was durable and easy to manipulate....which means a lot when you have to make the most of minimal space!

Quite a good book and ideal to focus a course around