Strata

“Lushly descriptive… In Poppick’s hands, something as simple as a rime of muck around the edge of a driveway is an invitation to wonder about relationships and changes that can only be understood through layers of stone stacked like storybook pages… Poppick’s lavish writing presents a gem on nearly every page… And through her fondness for strata and the stories that can be found therein, readers will be left with something better than a geological crash course. They will turn the final page with a new way of looking at the interplay between the world we know and its backstory.” – Science Magazine“In Strata, journalist Laura Poppick offers a paean to this subtle science of reading the rocks, and the lessons it can teach us about how the planet responds and recovers from periods of upheaval … an admirable effort to make stratigraphy not boring.” – James Dinneen - New Scientist“An emotional, humane book that explores geology in a new way.” – Scientific American“Poppick is an elegant writer and able guide through the layers of sediment and history that made human life possible, and in the profiles of scientists whose work helps us understand our planet’s past we can see the best in humanity.” – The Boston Globe

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.