Assembling California - Qorkz Book Club
/Do you know how we at Qorkz are obsessed with terroir? Well, we aren’t the only ones. This was the clear message of John McPhee’s, Assembling California. The author, John McPhee is famous for writing literary nonfiction (this Qorkzter’s favorite kind of writing) and his topics tend to coincide with his personal interests.
Assembling California tells the story of the amazingly complicated geology of that state, and much of the west coast. This information rolls out as McPhee drives the roads of the Golden State with note Geologist, Eldridge Moores, Professor Emeritus of Geology at UC Davis, stopping off to look at road cuts. Yes, this is true. You can see the hundreds of millions of years of geologic history by pulling over on the highway and looking where road crews cut through the hills and mountains and left the rocks exposed. Will you ever just drive down the highway blindly again? I won’t.
Professor Moores’ speciality is ophiolite, or sections of oceanic crust. This is important to the geologic history of California because so much of the state is built of small crustal fragments that have travelled thousands of miles using plate tectonics and faults to make their way to places where you would never expect them. And then slam to together or otherwise accrete (stick together). Really.
Now, I will tell you that this book is intense. And I am a serious nerd saying this. Ask our CEO. He once had to road trip with me when I kept talk nerd talk. He survived. barely. The science can be a little overwhelming but there are sections that are adorable that you can’t believe it. Like about how John McPhee went with Prof. Moores to Napa and Sonoma County to look at the “geology” but spent their time wine tasting. How perfect is that?
There is good news and bad about this book. First the good news. It is available as a book on tape. Check on Barnes and Noble or iTunes. The bad news? This book got mixed in with a number of other books by McPhee, Basin and Range (1981), In Suspect Terrain (1983), Rising from the Plains (1986), and Crossing the Craton (2002) to become the 1999 Pulitzer Prize winning Annals of the Former World which is the story of the 4.6 billion year geologic history of North America.
California is enough for me. For now.