Basin and Range by John McPhee [FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION] 1987 • Farrar Straus Giroux

$8.00

Basin and Range by John McPhee [Annals of the Former World #1]

FIRST TRADE PAPERBACK EDITION [1987] FARRAR STRAUS & GIROUX

11th trade paperback printing of this pulitzer nominee w/ decorative endpapers.

*Note - spotting to undersides of cover. see photos. Cover is like new. Actual contents read nicely.

1982 Pulitzer Prize nominee for general non-fiction.

The first of John McPhee’s works in his series on geology and geologists, Basin and Range is a book of journeys through ancient terrains, always in juxtaposition with travels in the modern world—a history of vanished landscapes, enhanced by the histories of people who bring them to light. The title refers to the physiographic province of the United States that reaches from eastern Utah to eastern California, a silent world of austere beauty, of hundreds of discrete high mountain ranges that are green with junipers and often white with snow. The terrain becomes the setting for a lyrical evocation of the science of geology, with important digressions into the plate-tectonics revolution and the history of the geologic time scale.