Saturday, May 1, 2004

Finished reading Simon Lamb's Devil in the Mountain last week. If you like geology and mountains, this book is for you. It tells a good story of the development of a scientist as he gets deeper and deeper into the complexities of the growth of the Andes. It packs a lot of geology, including details about measurement methods that are not usually included in popular science writing. It also gives a lively portrait of the people, landscape, and of the hazards of field geology. An episode of scrambling up volcanoes to capture gas samples is pretty convincing for anyone who has ever struggled with thin air, steep, unstable slopes, and much slower progress than planned. It is not in the same literary league as John McPhee's Annals of the Former World, and falls into cliché sometimes, but it catches better the feel of science being done. 4:58:26 PM