Bretz's Flood
The Remarkable Story of a Rebel Geologist and the World's Greatest Flood
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
The masterful story of the scientific rebel who dared to think outside the box—and changed the course of geologic history
The land between Idaho and the Cascade Mountains is characterized by gullies, coulees, and deserts—in geologic terms, it is a wholly unique place on the earth. In the 1920s, legendary geologist and professor J Harlen Bretz peered back in time to answer the riddle of how this land came to be, becoming one of the first people to explore the area. Defying the conventional wisdom of his peers, Bretz saw a landscape that had been instantly scoured by a flood of unprecedented scale. Though met with public and academic humiliation—his theory sounded too much like the biblical flood—Bretz persevered and went on to discover what everyone else had failed to see.
Bretz's Flood tells the dramatic story of this scientific maverick—how he came to study the region, his radical theory that a huge flood created it, and how the mainstream geologic community campaigned to derail him from pursuing an idea that satellite photos would confirm decades later.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
J Harlen Bretz was an unusual geologist: more than a maverick-turned-icon, more than a conscientious and thorough field worker, and more than a demanding professor, he also had a remarkable sense of humor and the strength to persevere despite professional obloquy. Author Soennichsen (Live! From Death Valley) delivers a vivid portrait of the man whose pioneering work began by accident, when a 1921 summer field trip to the Cascade Mountains fell through. Instead, Bretz led his students on foot through the Washington Scablands around Spokane, and returned every summer after with his students and family to map, measure, and record the unique terrain-including the gigantic "ship" of eroded basalt at Grand Coulee and the dried remains of the world's largest waterfall. Bretz's conclusions, of a massive flood unlike anything ever observed, met with intense opposition (largely from those who never observed the Scablands in person). Only over time, and with the advent of aerial photography, were Bretz's ideas confirmed; it's now known that glacial Lake Missoula drained dozens of times, each time unleashing a vast flood across the Pacific Northwest. Soennichsen's book explores a fascinating life in science, and should have appeal for Pacific Northwesterners and science buffs. 20 b&w photos.
