N Y: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. A clean, unmarked book with a tight binding. Full brown cloth boards bumped and lightly faded. Edge wear and small tears on dust jacket. Endpapers show chart of geologic eras. 214 pages. ""This is about high-country geology and a Rocky Mountain regional geologist. I raise that semaphore here at the start so no one will feel misled by an opening passage in which a slim young woman who is not in any sense a geologist steps down from a train in Rawlins, Wyoming, in order to go north by stagecoach into country that was still very much the Old West."" [blurb]

Synopsis

Rising from the Plains is John McPhee's third book on geology and geologists. Following Basin and Range and In Suspect Terrain , it continues to present a cross-section of North America along the fortieth parallel—a series gathering under the overall title Annals of the Former World. Sometimes it is said of geologists that they reflect in their professional styles the sort of country in which they grew up. Nowhere could that be more true than in the life of a geologist born in the center of Wyoming and raised on an isolated ranch. This is the story of that ranch, soon after the turn of the century, and of the geologist who grew up there, at home with the composition of the high country in the way that someone growing up in a coastal harbor would be at home with the vagaries of the sea. While Rising from the Plains is a portrayal of extraordinary people, it is also a history of the landscape around them, where, with remarkable rapidity, mountains came up out of the flat terrain. Gradually, the mountains were buried, until only the higher peaks remained above a vast plain. Recently, they have been exhumed, and they stand now as the Rockies. -Description from First Edition (1986 Dust Jacket)

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Details

Bookseller: Pistil Books Online (US)
Bookseller's Inventory #: 155575
Title: Rising from the Plains
Author: McPhee, John
Format/Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Used - Very Good
Jacket Condition: Very Good
Quantity Available: 1
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0374250820
ISBN 13: 9780374250829
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Place of Publication: N Y
Date Published: 1986
Keywords: geology, first Edition, High-Country, Rocky Mountains, Wyoming, Ranch, Landscape, History
Bookseller catalogs: Geology;

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Glossary

Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:

First Edition: In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
Tight: Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
Cloth: "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
Jacket: Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...