Windows Into the Earth: The Geologic Story of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks

by Lee J. Siegel and Robert Baer Smith

Book Overview

Millions of years ago, the North American continent was dragged over the world's largest continental hotspot, a huge column of hot and molten rock rising from the Earth's interior that traced a 50-mile wide, 500-mile-long path northeastward across Idaho. Generating cataclysmic volcanic eruptions and large earthquakes, the hotspot helped lift the Yellowstone Plateau to more than 7,000 feet and pushed the northern Rockies to new heights, forming unusually...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195105974
• ISBN13: 9780195105971
• Release Date: May 2000
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.98 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.9" x 9.9"

Customer Reviews

Best Geology Book On Greater Yellowstone

I work as a guide in Grand Teton Park and I love to visit Yellowstone. This book is the best I've read on the geology of the area. The geology of it all is hard to understand and harder to believe, but this book has helped me the most in understanding and sharing the geology of the area with others.

It is also good to review geology

I chose this book for my final project in geology class because I was interested in Yellowstone National parks though I have never been to, and this book was very good not only to read but also to review my studying in the class. Yellowstone and Grand Teton ground systems such as ground movements and heating systems are covered and also advanced my studying. Actually, I had totally no knowledge about geologic activities before I studied in the class, so this book was also really good to review my studying. In addition, this book introduces these parks view points with beautiful and colored pictures, so this book also can be used for a tourbook. It is no doubt that I will go to these parks with this book!

An indispensible visitor guide

A friend loaned me this book two months ago. I haven't returned it yet. It is simply the best book on these two parks that I have ever read. The authors accurately portray the very considerable geological power present in each park, and yet do not manage to make either park a fearful place to be avoided. Instead, their writing is a persuasive invitation to visit these wonderful manifestations of nature for an extended period. I was particularly impressed by the visitor's tour set out near the end of the book. I took a part of that tour in 1994, and the narrative is very accurate. I will certainly use my OWN copy of the book when I go back again this autumn. (I don't want anyone to think I don't return borrowed books!) This book is an absolute musthave-mustread for anyone going to the parks or interested in the geological processes that have made the West. Enjoy.

Indiana Jones, Eat Your Heart Out

This treasure will turn "topography" into a household word. Dedicated to a fellow geologist recently killed by an avalance while conducting fieldwork, "Windows" is a slick and dramatic feature presentation of volcanism, earthquakes, and geysers. Superb maps and graphs colorfully illustrate variable stratae formed through the eons. An informal and friendly text is scholarly without being stuffy. The writers establish a tone of substance and humor as they discuss multiple upheavals that created Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. This is the kind of book that will impress early rock-ologists and even be hoarded by their more secretive, sedimental parents. The writing never "dumbs down" but is lucid with factual attention to landscape formation without snubbing the human astonishment that continually witnesses it. Thanks to geologist Smith and naturalist journalist Seigel, the book is threaded with lively accounts from park rangers, tourists, and waitresses at the Old Faithful Inn. Appeals to romantics and literalists alike. Studded with beautiful, full-color photographs. Every page is hefty and sleek to the touch, a feast for the eye as well as the brain. Kind of a wonder-book for anyone who seeks the phenomenal in terra firma.

Windows is excellent

Windows into the Earth is a fantastic book! It is excellent reading for geologist and non-geologist alike. Easy to understand descriptions of the geophysical processes that shape the Yellowstone area, and nice full color pictures and diagrams to help the explanations along. You'll have to visit Yellowstone after reading it to see it in a whole new light.