This college text was an excelent history of the world; from the earth's origin to the first humans. The book begins with some fundamental geological principles, then covers how fossils form in rock. It them proceeds to groupings or subdivisions of geologic time. The phenomenon of continental drift is covered. Finally, on page 125 the author begins the detailed history of sediment deposition for different parts of the world, starting mostly ith areas that had very old early depoition. This core of the book covers many stages of subsidence, uplift and mountain building, proliferation of living things, ice ages, and major well documented catastrophic die-offs of most living things which happened at the ends of many geologic eras. Finaly, on page 510 the author gets to the fossil record of early man.

Appendixes start on page 522, summarizing the classification of plant and animal life, and there is an 18 page index.

There have been few changes in the knowledge of earth's history since this book was published. Most noteable might be the pinpoint location of the crater left by the asteroid that hit earth ending the dinosaur age and also most living things. Other craters have been found that relate to some of the other geologic era terminations. The material in the book is still up to date. ( )