Reading the Rocks: How Victorian Geologists Discovered the Secret of Life

London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Very Good/Very Good. 2017. First Edition, First Impression. Hard Cover. 8vo 1408879581 Dust jacket complete, unclipped, rubbed area on rear. Original cloth boards with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership marks. A couple of marks. Plates. 254 pages clean and tight. A rich and exuberant group biography of the first geologists, the people first to excavate from the layers of the world its buried history. Some came from the ranks of gentlemen with the wealth to support their interests, yet others were clergymen, academics - and women. This lively and assorted band brought passion, eccentricity and towering intellect to geology. This new science demanded great courage from its followers. In revealing Earth's ancient past, its findings presented a conflict with Genesis: for the rocks and fossils clearly showed that the Earth had not sprung from a creation made in six days as the Bible claimed, but was instead millennia old. Fossils also showed that the changing forms of life advanced steadily in their sophistication; it is no coincidence that Charles Darwin was a keen geologist. Brenda Maddox does full justice to the individual stories of this eclectic group, exploring their triumphs and disappointments. The effect is absorbing, inspiring and strikingly original. The theological, philosophical and scientific debates this first movement provoked were to alter dramatically and irrevocably our understanding of the world. This biography brings that momentous time gloriously to life. .