The Earth: An intimate history by Richard Fortey, HarperCollins, £25, ISBN 0002570114
BOOKS with a title this ambitious generally do not live up to their billing. This one does. It is the tale of breakthroughs in our knowledge of the Earth no less significant than those that revolutionised our understanding of physics or genetics in recent decades. For the science it covers, the human stories and the leisurely style in which it conveys vast amounts of information, The Earth deserves to be a bestseller.
The unifying theory that makes this book possible is plate tectonics. The fact that a heat…
