This book is an interesting stroll through both the Appenines of central-northern Italy and late 20th century sedimentary geology and tectonics. I had previously enjoyed Walter Alvarez's T-Rex & the Crater of Doom, about the Chicxulub impact event and the K-Pg extinction event (doomsday for the non-avian dinosaurs).

I should say as a disclaimer that nothing in this book was new to me, apart from the specifics of the Appenines. I already knew all the field geology and tectonics, which no doubt helped. But he does provide what seemed like helpful and intuitive explanations of everything ranging from the principle of superposition to the delamination of continental lithosphere (!). It's all the usual stuff: soggy tissues for extensional/compressional fronts, and plate rollback is covered by a bathtub and blocks of wood... or something. Yeah.

But I certainly gained an appreciation of Appenine geology and tectonics, and I've copied out some references from the notes to follow up on. I longed for the days when I used to study tectonics. The book definitely suffers from author-citation syndrome, but it didn't bother me too much.

It's good and I enjoyed it very much, but general readers should be at least a little wary: the eye-catching bits about the dinosaur-killing asteroid and the giant Mediterranean salt lake form only small parts of the book -- as does snippets of medieval history and architecture. Most of the book introduces concepts from sedimentary geology and tectonics in order to explain how the Appenines and modern Italy have formed over the last 30 million years.