Written by a passionate and professional geologist who has spent countless hours in the field exploring and photographing the state, In Search of Ancient Oregon is a book for all those interested in Oregon's landscapes and environments. It presents fine-art-quality color photographs of well-known features such as Mount Hood, Crater Lake, Smith Rock, Steens Mountain, the Columbia River Gorge, and Cannon Beach, and scenic, not so well known places such as Jordan Craters, Leslie Gulch, Abert Rim, Hells Canyon, Elkhorn Mountains, and Three Fingered Jack. Each of the more than 220 stunning photographs is accompanied by readable text, presenting the story of how Oregon's diverse landscapes evolved — and what we may expect in the future. Until now, no book has presented this dynamic story in a way that everyone interested in Oregon's natural history can easily understand. The combination of extraordinary photographs and the author's lucid explanations make this book both unique and essential for those curious about our own contemporary landscape.

     122 million miles away from her controllers, a sophisticated robot smaller than a microwave oven did what had never been done before-explore the rocky, red terrain of Mars. Then, six-wheeled Sojourner beamed spectacular pictures of her one-of-a-kind mission back to Earth. And millions of people were captivated. Now, with the touch of an expert thriller writer, Sojourner operations team leader Andrew Mishkin tells the inside, human story of the Mars Pathfinder mission's feverish efforts to build a self-guided, offroading robot to explore the surface of the Red Planet. With witty, compelling anecdotes, he describes the clash of temperamental geniuses, the invention of a new work ethic, the turf wars, the chewing-gum solutions to high-tech problems, the controlled chaos behind the strangely beautiful creation of an artificial intelligence-and the exhilaration of inaugurating the next great age of space exploration.

    The first-ever comprehensive history of the study of such igneous rocks, it traces the development of igneous petrology from ancient descriptions of volcanic eruptions to recent work incorporating insights from physical chemistry, isotope studies, and fluid dynamics.Intellectual developments in the field--from the application of scientific methods to the study of rocks to the discovery of critical data and the development of the field's major theories--are considered within their broader geographical, social, and technological contexts. Mind over Magma examines the spread of igneous petrology from western Europe to North America, South Africa, Japan, Australia, and much of the rest of the world. It considers the professionalization and Anglicization of the field, detailing changes in publication outlets, the role of women, and the influence of government funding. The book also highlights the significant role that technological developments--including the polarizing microscope, high-temperature quenching furnaces, and instrumental analysis--have played in the discovery of new data and development of revolutionary insights into the nature of igneous rocks.Both an engagingly told story and a major reference, Mind over Magma is the only available history of this important field. As such, it will be appreciated by petrologists, geochemists, and other geologists as well as by those interested in the history of science.

    In the process, they were intervening in the world's natural environment in equally unprecedented and dramatic ways. A sweeping work of environmental history, The Unending Frontier offers a truly global perspective on the profound impact of humanity on the natural world in the early modern period. John F. Richards identifies four broadly shared historical processes that speeded environmental change from roughly 1500 to 1800 c.e.: intensified human land use along settlement frontiers; biological invasions; commercial hunting of wildlife; and problems of energy scarcity. The Unending Frontier considers each of these trends in a series of case studies, sometimes of a particular place, such as Tokugawa Japan and early modern England and China, sometimes of a particular activity, such as the fur trade in North America and Russia, cod fishing in the North Atlantic, and whaling in the Arctic. Throughout, Richards shows how humans—whether clearing forests or draining wetlands, transporting bacteria, insects, and livestock; hunting species to extinction, or reshaping landscapes—altered the material well-being of the natural world along with their own.