Strata

Rock has never felt more alive, nor deep time more current, than in Laura Poppick’s absorbing, illuminating Strata…This book is an indispensable guide to the dynamic stories our planet writes in stone.–Ben Goldfarb, award-winning author of Crossings and EagerStrata, like its subject, is deep and richly layered with stories–of the planet, and of the people doggedly trying to decipher the tales locked within its rocks. It left me with a profound appreciation of our world, and the sheer amount of history upon which we stand.–Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of An Immense WorldIt is one thing for a book to transform your knowledge of the world, and another for its lyricism to shape how you perceive yourself in it, too. Reading Laura Poppick’s Strata felt like being gifted a pair of magic glasses through which I could not only revel anew in our planet’s geology, but understand myself–and our warming future–within it.–Erica Berry, author of WolfishIn Laura Poppick’s wise and wonderfully observant Strata, Earth is not a static stage but an epic told in silt, sand, and microscopic fossils. A rare and exhilarating view of our ever-changing planet.–Michelle Nijhuis, author of Beloved BeastsLike the earth itself, Strata is a work of many layers. It’s about the deep past, about how geologists work and think, about the great changes that have taken place in geological history and the ones that lie ahead. Laura Poppick is an elegant writer and an intrepid reporter.–Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth ExtinctionTraipsing through ancient mud flows and across the frozen rind of early Earth, and imagining the origins of our atmosphere along with its searing hot future, Laura Poppick introduces us to a cast of characters working to peel back the layers of Earth history. Threads of memoir and poetry remind us that while the work of geology is timeless, it happens on personal timescales. In the tradition of our best natural history writers, Poppick understands the true gift of geology is the perspective of deep time, where we come to understand that not even stone is indelible. Strata offers a reminder that the things which connect us, and will outlast us all, are deeper still: the iron in our blood, the oxygen we breathe, and the stories we tell.–Rebecca Boyle, author of Our MoonLaura Poppick takes readers deep into the minds of geologists working to interpret the sedimentary chronicles of four critical ‘moments’ in Earth’s past. Revealing the logic used to decode the rock record–and the reasons geologists sometimes disagree about the details of the translation–Strata is an extraordinary book.–Marcia Bjornerud, author of Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks

Laura Poppick is a science and environmental journalist whose writing has appeared in the New York Times, Smithsonian, Scientific American, Wired, Audubon, National Geographic, Science, and elsewhere. She has been listed as a finalist for the National Association of Science Writers Science in Society Journalism Award and the Maine Literary Awards Short Works Competition in Nonfiction, among others. She lives in Portland, Maine.