Since the 1980s, Chris Pellant has been writing earth science books. Smithsonian Handbooks: Rocks and Minerals, The Complete Book of Rocks and Minerals, Fossils of the World, and Discover Science: Rocks and Fossils are just a few examples. Aside from his writing, he runs a photographic library with his wife, Helen, and is an avid researcher and conservationist.

This authoritative guide, produced in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, includes over 500 rocks and minerals. Smithsonian Handbooks: Rocks and Minerals makes identification simple with photographs and details on characteristics, distinguishing features, and more.

This guide explains what rocks and minerals are, how they are classified, and how to start a collection for both novice and experienced collectors. Look up different rocks and minerals and look for clear, annotated photography to help you identify the key distinguishing features. Learn the distinctions between igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks, and consult the glossary for definitions of many more technical and scientific terms.

Smithsonian Handbooks: Rocks and Minerals is jam-packed with information about characteristics, colors, and other distinguishing features, making it one of the most comprehensive identification guides for rock and mineral enthusiasts. It is among the best books on geology.

Author: Chris Pellant

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Smithsonian-Handbooks-Rocks-Minerals/dp/0789491060/

Ratings: 4.7 out of 5 stars (from 2179 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #60,550 in Books

#27 in Natural Resources (Books)

#29 in Rocks & Minerals

#123 in Outdoors & Nature Reference

Since 1970, Fred Lutgens and Ed Tarbuck have been good friends and colleagues. They have over 57 years of combined experience teaching geology to undergraduates, and both have received awards for being excellent and inspiring professors. They all have a special interest in teaching geology to beginning students and believe in the importance of field experiences for students of all levels.

The 13th Edition of Essentials of Geology, from the renowned Lutgens/Tarbuck/Tasa team, continues to improve the text's readability, illustrations, and emphasis on fundamental principles. This revision includes a structured learning path as well as a dependable, consistent framework for mastering chapter concepts. This edition provides a unique, interactive, and engaging learning experience for readers with a fully integrated mobile media program that includes new Mobile Field Trip and Project Condor quadcopter videos, as well as new animations and videos.

MasteringTM Geology is an online homework, tutorial, and assessment program designed to complement this text and help students engage and achieve better results. Individualized coaching is provided by interactive, self-paced tutorials to help students stay on track. Students can actively learn, understand, and retain even the most difficult concepts by engaging in a variety of activities.

Author: Fred Lutgens and Ed Tarbuck

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Geology-13th-Frederick-Lutgens/dp/0134446623/

Ratings: 4.4 out of 5 stars (from 361 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #594,236 in Books

#131 in Earth Sciences (Books)

#372 in Geology (Books)

Owen Christensen is a self-avowed rockhound, an avid fisherman, and a proud father. He has been rockhounding for over 30 years and has a collection of over 5,000 pieces, including stunning azurite specimens, his favorite mineral. His book "The Rockhounding Encyclopedia" contains over 530 GPS coordinates for the best rockhounding locations in the United States. His work aims to assist beginners who want to begin collecting rocks as well as those who want to improve their recognition skills.

Do you want to get into rockhounding but don't know where to begin? Do you want to know where you can go to find valuable rocks near you? Do you want to learn how to identify gemstones and minerals at a glance?

If any of these questions sound like something you really need help with, and you're a rockhound at heart, keep reading... Finding and identifying gemstones can be challenging for both novice and intermediate rockhounds. If you don't know what you're looking for, the countless tiny details, color variations, and numerous rocks can easily lead to confusion. But this does not have to be the case.

This special bundle contains:

• over 100 beautiful gemstones, minerals, geodes, and fossils.
• the best rockhounding locations in the United States and around the world with the most beautiful rocks
• the essential rockhounding tools for staying safe and having fun on your next rockhounding adventure
• the practical, step-by-step method for identifying rocks at first sight
• how to buy and sell gemstones online to make money and expand your collection, and much more useful information

By the end of The Rockhounding Encyclopedia, you'll know exactly where to look for and how to identify your favorite gems. Even if you've never been rockhounding before and have no idea where to begin, or if you're an experienced rockhound looking to go back to the basics and pick up new tips and tricks along the way, this special bundle is designed to provide you with all of the education, tools, and skills you'll need to find, recognize, and collect gorgeous gemstones and minerals on your own.

Author: Owen Christensen

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Rockhounding-Encyclopedia-Identifying-Collecting-Coordinates/dp/B0BJ7TQZQJ/

Ratings: 4.9 out of 5 stars (from 286 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #11,521 in Books

#1 in Sedimentary Geology

#1 in Mineralogy (Books)

#6 in Rocks & Minerals

Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875) was a British geologist best known for The Principles of Geology: Being an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface, by Reference to Causes Now in Operation (3 vols 1830-33).

Principles of Geology by Charles Lyell (1830-33) attempted to explain the geological state of the modern Earth by examining the long-term effects of observable natural phenomena. It is both a seminal work of modern geology and a compelling precursor to Darwinism, exploring the evidence for radical changes in climate and geography throughout the ages and speculating on the progressive development of life. Principles of Geology had a profound influence on Darwin and captured the imaginations of contemporaries such as Melville, Emerson, Tennyson, and George Eliot, transforming science with its depiction of the powerful forces that shape the natural world.

Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world for over seventy years. Penguin Classics, with over 1,700 titles, represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history, across genres, and disciplines. Readers rely on the series to provide authoritative texts that are supplemented with introductions and notes by eminent scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Author: Sir Charles Lyell

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Geology-Penguin-Classics-Charles/dp/014043528X/

Ratings: 4.2 out of 5 stars (from 64 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #539,146 in Books

#88 in Regional Geography

#233 in Rocks & Minerals

#263 in Historical Geography

Field geologist John Grotzinger is interested in the evolution of the Earth's surface environments and biosphere. His studies focus on the chemical evolution of the early oceans and atmosphere, the environmental context of early animal evolution, and the geologic factors that govern sedimentary basins.

Thomas H. Jordan is the director of the Southern California Earthquake Center at the University of Southern California, as well as a University Professor and the W. M. Keck Foundation Professor of Earth Sciences. As SCEC's principal investigator since 2002, he has overseen all aspects of the center's earthquake system science program, which now includes over 600 scientists from more than 60 universities and research institutions around the world.

For a course in introductory geology or physical geology.Among the best books on geology, Understanding Earth provides both majors and non-majors with rock solid content based on the groundbreaking text, Earth. The text has consistently met the needs of today's students in subsequent editions, with exceptional content, currency, interactive learning features, and an overall focus on the role of geological science in our lives.

Understanding Earth does not simply present physical geology concepts and processes; rather, the authors focus on how we know what we know. Students actively participate in the scientific discovery process and learn by doing as they investigate the impact of geology on their lives as citizens and future stewards of the planet. The new edition includes coverage of recent natural disasters (the 2011 tsunami), fracking and other natural resource issues, climate change developments, and key events such as the Mars mission and the arrest of geologists in Italy.

Author: John P. Grotzinger and Thomas H. Jordan

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Earth-John-Grotzinger/dp/1464138745/

Ratings: 4.2 out of 5 stars (from 140 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #812,023 in Books

#143 in Environmental Studies

#531 in Geology (Books)

#1,956 in Environmental Science (Books)

Andrew H. Knoll is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Fisher Professor of Natural History at Harvard University. He is a trained paleontologist who has spent more than two decades working to integrate geological and biological perspectives on the origins of life.

Australopithecines, dinosaurs, and trilobites—such fossils evoke images of lost worlds teeming with extinct organisms. However, in the grand scheme of things, ancient animals, even trilobites, are only the tip of a nearly four-billion-year iceberg. Andrew Knoll delves into the deep history of life, from its origins on a young planet to the amazing Cambrian explosion, offering a compelling new explanation for the emergence of biological novelty.

The most recent paleontological discoveries, many of which were made by the author and his students, are combined with emerging insights from molecular biology and earth system science to provide a comprehensive understanding of how the biological diversity that surrounds us came to be. From Siberia to Namibia to the Bahamas, Knoll demonstrates how life and the environment have coevolved throughout Earth's history. Biology innovations have helped shape our air and oceans, and environmental change has influenced the course of evolution, repeatedly closing doors for some species while opening doors for others.

Readers travel to the field to confront fossils, to the lab to learn about the inner workings of cells, and to Mars to consider how our terrestrial experience can guide the search for life beyond our planet. Along the way, Knoll updates us on some of science's most pressing issues, from the oldest fossils and claims of life beyond the Earth to the global glaciation hypothesis and Knoll's own unifying concept of "permissive ecology."

Life on a Young Planet explains our place in the universe and our responsibility as stewards of a world four billion years in the making by exposing Earth's deepest biological roots. Knoll describes how the field has broadened and deepened in the decade since the book's original publication in a new preface.

Author: Andrew H. Knoll

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Life-Young-Planet-Evolution-Princeton/dp/069116553X/

Ratings: 4.5 out of 5 stars (from 189 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #498,067 in Books

#151 in Paleontology (Books)

#299 in Geology (Books)

#1,494 in Biology (Books)

David Beerling is a Professor of Palaeoclimatology at the University of Sheffield's Department of Animal and Plant Sciences. Previously, he held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, for which his work on the evolution of life and the physical environment was recognized with the prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize in earth sciences (2001). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2014, and he held the Royal Society-Wolfson Research Merit Award from 2009 to 2014.

Plants have had a significant impact on the Earth's climate and the evolution of life. Plants, far from being "silent witnesses to the passage of time," are dynamic components of our world, shaping the environment as much as it has shaped them throughout history.

Plants take center stage in David Beerling's The Emerald Planet, revealing the critical role they have played in driving global environmental changes, recording hidden facets of Earth's history, and assisting us in predicting its future. His account combines evidence from fossil plants, experiments with living counterparts, and computer models of the 'Earth System' to shed light on our planet's history and biodiversity. This new approach explains how falling carbon dioxide levels removed a barrier to leaf evolution; how plants played a key role in pushing oxygen levels upwards, allowing spectacular giant insects to thrive in the Carboniferous; and how fascinating and contentious fossil evidence for an ancient hole in the ozone layer is strengthened. Along the way, Beerling introduces a lively cast of pioneering scientists from the Victorian era onwards, whose discoveries provided critical context for these and other mysteries.

This understanding of our planet's past casts a sobering light on our own climate-changing activities and provides hints about our climatic and ecological futures. There has never been a more important time to study plants and learn about the history of the world through the stories they tell. The book is considered one of the best books on geology.

Author: David Beerling

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Planet-changed-history-Landmark/dp/0198798326/

Ratings: 4.3 out of 5 stars (from 105 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #257,408 in Books

#13 in Botany (Books)

#78 in Paleontology (Books)

John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and attended Princeton and Cambridge Universities. His writing career began at Time magazine and continued with The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. McPhee received the Academy of Arts and Letters' Award in Literature in 1977. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World in 1999.

When John McPhee began his journeys back and forth across the United States twenty years ago, he intended to describe a cross section of North America at about the forty-first parallel and, in the process, gain an understanding not only of the science but also of the geologists he traveled with. The book's structure remained constant, but its scope required him to finish it in stages under the overall title Annals of the Former World.

Annals of the Former World, like the terrain it covers, tells a multilayered story, and the reader can take one of many paths through it. This is our best popular survey of geology and a modern nonfiction masterpiece, written as clearly and succinctly as it is profoundly informed. The Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction was awarded to Annals of the Former World in 1999.

Author: John McPhee

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Annals-Former-World-John-McPhee/dp/0374518734/

Ratings: 4.7 out of 5 stars (from 531 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #51,412 in Books

#13 in Geology (Books)

#59 in Travel Writing Reference

#446 in U.S. State & Local History

Albert Dickas, who was born in Ohio, earned a BA and an MA from Miami University (Oxford, Ohio). He received his PhD from Michigan State University and then spent many years working in the oil industry. For thirty-one years, he taught at the University of Wisconsin Superior, founded an environmental research center, and became involved in industrial oil exploration in the Precambrian strata of the Midcontinent Rift.

In Death Valley, rocks race across a lakebed. Tsetse flies that are 36 million years old and perfectly preserved have been discovered in Colorado. Dinosaur tracks were carved into Connecticut's ancient floodplains. A chasm in the Idaho desert. What are the similarities between these enigmatic geologic phenomena? These geologic wonders appear side by side in a single publication for the first time, causing a flurry of head scratching over the years.

Albert Dickas examines in detail at least one amazing site for each of the fifty states in 101 American Geo-Sites You've Gotta See, clearly explaining the geologic forces behind each one's origin. Dickas discusses not only iconic landforms like Wyoming's Devil's Tower, but also locations that are often overlooked but have fascinating stories to tell. Consider the Reelfoot scarp in Tennessee: to the untrained eye, it appears to be nothing more than a minor rise in a farm field. This subtle slope, however, represents a rift formed during an earthquake in 1812 that forced the mighty Mississippi to flow upstream. Or consider Avery Island in Louisiana, which hides an 8.5-mile-high column of salt. 101 American Geo-Sites You've Gotta See, richly illustrated with full-color photographs and illustrations and written in clear yet playful prose, will entertain and inform amateur and seasoned geology buffs alike, whether from an armchair or in the field.

Author: Albert Dickas

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00DMIFK5W/

Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 207 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #1,108,569 in Kindle Store

#255 in Geology (Kindle Store)

#1,288 in Geology (Books)

#1,783 in U.S. Regional Travel

Ron Martin is a geological sciences professor at the University of Delaware. He holds a B.S. in Geology from Bowling Green State University, an M.S. in Zoology from the University of Florida, and a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of California, Berkeley. His current research focuses on the evolution of plankton and the biosphere, marine-terrestrial interactions, and the formation of fossil assemblages, particularly microfossils, and their application in determining past climate and sea-level change; microfossils as bioindicators of ecosystem health; and geoarchaeology.

The second edition of Earth's Evolving Systems: The History of Planet Earth investigates the complex processes and interactions that have shaped our planet. Using a systems approach, this introductory text discusses the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere, as well as how these systems, plate tectonics, and life have interacted and evolved over geologic time. This approach to Earth's history combines the study of modern Earth systems with those of the past, piqueing students' interest in the process. No other text bridges the gap between traditional historical geology and the behavior of Earth systems with better art and illustrations. Earth's Evolving Systems: The History of Planet Earth, Second Edition captures the dynamism of our planet's fascinating history and serves as the foundation for understanding this exciting science. It is regarded as one of the best books on geology.

Author: Ronald E. Martin

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Earths-Evolving-Systems-History-Planet/dp/1284108295/

Ratings: 4.5 out of 5 stars (from 27 reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #1,091,796 in Books

#101 in Geophysics (Books)

#238 in Environmental Studies

#2,716 in Environmental Science (Books)