Preface Acknowledgments 1. Volcanic Tuff: Vulcan's Wrath: The Eruption of Vesuvius 2. Native Copper: The Iceman and the Island of Copper 3. Cassiterite: The "Isles of Tin" and the Bronze Age 4. Angular Unconformity: "No Vestige of a Beginning": The Immensity of Geologic Time 5. Igneous Dikes: The "Earth's Great Heat Engine": The Origin of Magmas 6. Coal: The Rock That Burns Fires the Industrial Revolution 7. Jurassic World: The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Rocks of Britain 8.

Radioactive Uranium: Clocks in Rocks: Arthur Holmes and the Age of the Earth 9. Chondritic Meteorites: Messengers From Space: The Origin of the Solar System 10. Iron-Nickel Meteorites: The Cores of Other Planets 11. Moon Rocks: Green Cheese or Anorthosite: The Origin of the Moon 12. Zircons: Early Oceans and Life? Evidence in a Grain of Sand 13. Stromatolites: Microbial Condos: Cyanobacteria and the Oldest Life 14. Banded Iron Formation: Mountains of Iron: The Earth's Early Atmosphere 15. Turbidites: Archean Sediments and Submarine Landslides 16.

Diamictites: Tropical Glaciers and the Snowball Earth 17. Exotic Terranes: Paradox in Rocks: Wandering Fossils and Traveling Landmasses 18. Jigsaw-Puzzle Bedrock: Alfred Wegener and Continental Drift 19. Chalk: The Cretaceous Seaway and Greenhouse Planet 20. The Iridium Layer: The Death of the Dinosaurs 21. Lodestones: How Paleomagic Launched Plate Tectonics 22. Blueschists: The Puzzle of Subduction Zones 23. Transform Faults: Earthquake! The San Andreas Fault 24.

Messinian Evaporites: The Mediterranean Was a Desert 25. Glacial Erraticts: A Poet, a Professor, a Politician, a Janitor, and the Discovery of the Ice Ages Index.