8.6 /10 1 Votes
Subject Geology Pages 696 OCLC 37588534 Originally published 1998 Page count 696 Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 4.3/5 Goodreads Publication date 1998 ISBN 978-0-374-10520-4 Dewey Decimal 557.3 21 Genre Non-fiction | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Awards Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction Similar Works by John McPhee, Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction winners, Earth science books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Annals of the Former World is a book on geology written by John McPhee and published in 1998 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.
The book presents a geological history of North America, and was researched and written over the course of two decades beginning in 1978. It consists of a compilation of five books, the first four of which were previously published as Basin and Range (1981), In Suspect Terrain (1983), Rising from the Plains (1986), and Assembling California (1993), plus a final book, Crossing the Craton. A narrative table of contents provides an overview of the project, which largely consisted of a series of road journeys by McPhee across the North American continent in the company of noted geologists.