Strata

The epic stories of our planet’s 4.54-billion-year history are written in strata—ages-old remnants of ancient seafloors, desert dunes and riverbeds striping canyon walls and cliffsides all around us. These layers of rock help geologists piece together how our planet became the place we know and gather context for modern change. In Strata, Laura Poppick travels across the globe to show us how to decipher these primeval plotlines. Digging into four moments of transformation that shaped Earth and made our lives possible—from the first accumulations of oxygen in the atmosphere to the deep freeze of “Snowball Earth”, the rise of mud on land and the dinosaurs’ reign on a hothouse planet—we see how the arc of geologic time bends toward stability. Beautifully grounding and laced with awe, Strata unveils the wisdom and hope for our times these rocks can hold.

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.