How well do you know the ground beneath your feet? Odds are, where you’re standing was once cooking under a roiling sea of lava, crushed by a towering sheet of ice, rocked by a nearby meteor strike, or perhaps choked by poison gases, drowned beneath ocean, perched atop a mountain range, or roamed by fearsome monsters. Probably most—or even all—of the above.
The story of our home planet and the organisms spread across its surface is far more spectacular than any Hollywood blockbuster, filled with enough plot twists to rival a bestselling thriller. But only recently have we begun to piece together the whole mystery into a coherent narrative.
Drawing on his decades of field research and up-to-the-minute understanding of the latest science, Andrew H. Knoll, a geologist and professor at Harvard University, offers a short biography of Earth, charting our home planet’s epic 4.6 billion-year story and placing 21st-century climate change in deep context. This Smithsonian Associates online lecture will take place January 13 from 6:46 – 8:15. $20 for Smithsonian Associates members, $25 for nonmembers. Register HERE.
His book, A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters (Custom House), is available for purchase.
Book Sale Information
- Purchase your copy of A Brief History of Earth by Andrew H. Knoll here.
- SPECIAL NOTE: Politics and Prose is offering a 10% discount to Smithsonian Associates ticket-holders. To claim your discount, enter the code SPECIAL10 (no space between letters and numbers) in the “Coupon discount” section on Politics and Prose’s check-out page.
