A Sequel to and an Update on John McPhee’s Annals of the Former World

      Wednesdays, 1:30 – 3:30 PM | April 10 – 24 & May 8 – 22 and beyond | ZOOM

       Leader: Paul Hague  Facilitator: Don Melander

In this geology course, we will read and discuss John Dvorak’s How the Mountains Grew: A New Geological History of North America, Pegasus Boks, 2022. John McPhee wrote and published his essays on geology, originally in the New Yorker, during the 1980s and 1990s. Although he is not a geologist, he spent two decades traveling generally East to West on I-80 and learning from geologists how North America was formed (long before it was North America). John Dvorak does not discuss McPhee’s great book, but for those of us who know McPhee’s work, Dvorak provides an excellent sequel consisting of what geologists have learned in the last two decades. We will start our discussions on the dates listed above and, if necessary, continue and conclude them as long as it takes after the Spring Term has ended.

Paul Hague is a retired geologist who spent many years conducting geophysical surveys to illuminate what lies beneath. An avid reader, he always has a book going, sometimes two or three. He first joined LINEC in the early 2000s and, believe it or not, taught a course on Joyce’s Ulysses. He’s also a film buff and is always eager to learn something new and to satisfy a curious and skeptical mind.