Roy Chester

Full of fascinating information about its topic; unfortunately it was too dry and technical to read. Apparently Chester couldn't shake his professorial academic background -- this book would make an excellent textbook for a geology course, but it fails miserably as a popular book. Chester presumes a great deal of prior knowledge on the part of the reader; there were too many places in the book where I was interested in the information, but didn't know enough geology to make sense of it -- as I read it I thought over and over, "I wish I had a professor to ask about this, or to give a lecture on it, so I could understand it."

I was surprised to see that it was published by AMACOM. AMACOM is the publishing division of the American Management Association, and solicits books only on business topics. Science is not in their normal purview. Perhaps Chester knew someone there? In any case, he apparently wasn't able to get it published by any general or scientific publishing house, and I'm not surprised. I gave it two stars only because I did glean some information from it, albeit disconnected and contextless.… (meer)