The Silver State has some of the most diverse geology in the United States, and much of it lies in plain sight thanks to the arid climate of the Great Basin. --Publisher.

Most people think of Nevada as a land of casinos and drive-in wedding chapels punctuating vast expanses of desolate desert. But at the heart of the Basin and Range province, the Silver State is also a geologist's playground, with great topographic relief

The first complete guide to all the state s remarkably diverse minerals"

The first of John McPhee's works in his series on geology and geologists, Basin and Range is a book of journeys through ancient terrains, always in juxtaposition with travels in the modern world—a history of vanished landscapes, enhanced by the histories of people who bring them to light. The title refers to the physiographic province of the United States that reaches from eastern Utah to eastern California, a silent world of austere beauty, of hundreds of discrete high mountain ranges that are green with junipers and often white with snow. The terrain becomes the setting for a lyrical evocation of the science of geology, with important digressions into the plate-tectonics revolution and the history of the geologic time scale.

A guide to what some call America's loneliest road Highway 50 between Lake Tahoe and Great Basin National Park. It takes the reader through historic mining towns, the Nevada gold belt, ghost towns, petroglyph sites, rock collecting localities, and wildlife viewing areas along the way.

From ski towns to national parks, fresh fruit to environmental lawsuits, the Sierra Nevada has changed the way Americans live. Whether and where there was gold to be mined redefined land, mineral, and water laws. Where rain falls (and where it doesn't) determines whose fruit grows on trees and whose appears on slot machines. All this emerges from the geology of the range and how it changed history, and in so doing, changed the country. The Mountains That Remade America combines geology with history to show how the particular forces and conditions that created the Sierra Nevada have effected broad outcomes and influenced daily life in the United States in the past and how they continue to do so today. Drawing connections between events in historical geology and contemporary society, Craig H. Jones makes geological science accessible and shows the vast impact this mountain range has had on the American West.