In Suspect Terrain

Written by John McPhee

Narrated by Nelson Runger

From the outwash plains of Brooklyn to Indiana's drifted diamonds and gold In Suspect Terrain is a narrative of the earth, told in four sections of equal length, each in a different way reflecting the three others—a biography; a set piece about a fragment of Appalachian landscape in illuminating counterpoint to the human history there; a modern collision of ideas about the origins of the mountain range; and, in contrast, a century-old collision of ideas about the existence of the Ice Age.

The central figure is Anita Harris, an internationally celebrated geologist who went into her profession to get out of a Brooklyn ghetto. The unifying theme is plate tectonics—here concentrating on the acceptance that all aspects of the theory do not universally enjoy. As such, In Suspect Terrain is a report from the rough spots at the front edge of a science.

“This is a book you cannot put down … It provides a great deal of information about the way many geologists think about science … and about the necessity for continual questioning and revising of new and old ideas. This is the best way science can remain healthy and continue to grow.”—Robert D. Hatcher, Jr., Natural History

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 27, 2008
• ISBN: 9781440798832

John McPhee

John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. Also in 1965, he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the years since, he has written over 30 books, including Oranges (1967), Coming into the Country (1977), The Control of Nature (1989), The Founding Fish (2002), Uncommon Carriers (2007), and Silk Parachute (2011). Encounters with the Archdruid (1972) and The Curve of Binding Energy (1974) were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science. McPhee received the Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1977. In 1999, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Reviews for In Suspect Terrain

[m.belljackson · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Unlike all the other John McPhee books I have read, this one involves more personality.The opinions of Anita Harris are delivered in an unpleasant way as she and John traverse the land.

[seabear_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Ugh. I can't put my finger on it, but this felt patronising and completely over the top. The plate tectonics scepticism doesn't help, but nor does the overawed style. I need to come to terms with the fact that I just don't like this guy.

[jjmcgaffey · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting but - scattered. I learned quite a bit about glacial terrain and the history of that theory...but the book was written in 1983 and is mostly in the voice of a geologist who did not believe in the theory of plate tectonics (or at least did not believe it was the answer to as many geological questions as its supporters claim); my immediate question, since I was taught plate tectonics as a given, was whether she was as crackpot conservative as Agassiz about evolution, or whether there is still serious question about plate tectonics. It's an interesting question, and I'm going to have to hunt for an answer. But that means that while I learned some interesting facts, the central focus of the book was an unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable, question - which makes it a somewhat unsatisfying read. There are also the usual McPhee diversions from the subject at hand to the personal life of the informing character (all of his books are written as someone telling him things - that someone I'm calling the informing character). I don't really need to know that Anita Epstein divorced one geologist husband and became Anita Harris when she married another - it's not particularly pertinent to the geology or to understanding what Anita is talking about as she discusses geology. If I were reading for people I'd be bored out of my wits by all the geology; as I'm reading for geology I'm annoyed at the diversions into personalities. It's OK, and I'm glad I read it, but I doubt I'll reread - actually, it makes me want to read my old textbook on the discovery of fossils and glaciers, Prehistoric America. It covers some of the same ground and is more enjoyable to read. I checked with a friend who's just finishing a graduate course in geology; yes, Anita was crackpot conservative. Plate tectonics is piling up the evidence.

[jmccamant · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Classic John McPhee geology, disappointing only in that the geologist he travels with is less interesting than his typical guide. But if you're looking for an easy refresher on Appalachian tectonic history, this is a lovely choice.

[name99_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

My feelings about this essay pretty much match my earlier feelings regarding Basin and Range: interesting, but too "literary" and journalistic, with not enough science.The interesting things I took home from it are: * That ice ages are rare (every 300 million years or so), but that, like rivers but even faster, they change landscapes substantially on a pace far more rapid than the slowness of orogeny and tectonics; and that a lot of the landscape of the Northern US, Europe and Asia are the visible remnants of the last round of glaciation ending only ten or twenty thousand years ago.* That one gets a not misleading map of geological time onto human historical time by treating a million years as one year.* That diamonds (and kimberlite pipes) are remarkable phenomena, in that for a diamond to get to the earth's surface from the pressure/heat zone where it is created without decomposing requires some sort of explosive release of the earth, a squirting out of the material at supersonic speeds; and that kimberlite pipes are interesting because they contain other material from the same pressure/heat zone that, with luck, has also not decomposed.* That while coal is easy to form, oil is a lot more tricky because it has to be created, and then maintained for its entire lifetime, within a fairly narrow temperature band; excursions to higher temperatures will decompose the material to natural gas.* The dust jacket tries to make a big deal of the fact that the central geologist of this volume, Anita Harris, "does not believe in plate tectonics".The reality is substantially more nuanced. She seems quite happy to accept some aspects of tectonics, doesn't like some of the wilder applications of the theory (the same sort of wild applications of theory we've also seen in fields like evolutionary psychology, nothing new there), and mostly seems to be something of an old fogey complaining about how "in my day geologists had it tough and really walked around on the rocks".