A rich & exuberant group biography of the first geologists, the people who were first to excavate from the layers of the world its buried history. These first geologists were made up primarily, & inevitably, of gentlemen with the necessary wealth to support their interests, yet boosting their numbers, expanding their learning & increasing their findings were clergymen, academics
- & women. This lively & eclectic collection of characters brought passion, eccentricity & towering intellect to geology & Brenda Maddox in Reading the Rocks does them full justice, bringing them to vivid life. The new science of geology was pursued by this assorted band because it opened a window on Earth`s ancient past. They showed great courage in facing the conflict between geology & Genesis that immediately presented itself: for the rocks & fossils being dug up showed that the Earth was immeasurably old, rather than springing from a creation made in the six days that the Bible claimed. It is no coincidence that Charles Darwin was a keen geologist. The individual stories of these first geologists, their hope & fears, triumphs & disappointments, the theological, philosophical & scientific debates their findings provoked, & the way that as a group, they were to change irrevocably & dramatically our understanding of the world is told by Brenda Maddox with a storyteller`s skill & a fellow scientist`s understanding. The effect is absorbing, revelatory & strikingly original.