The Top 3 Best Geology Books

Geology is an exciting study, and if you’re curious about the best geology books to brush up your knowledge on this subject, here is our insight.

Highlights

• Elements Of Geology
• The Amateur Geologist’s Guide
• Introduction To Geology – The Dynamics Of The Earth

1. Elements Of Geology (Maurice Renard, Yves Lagabrielle, Erwan Martin, Charles Pomerol)

To understand geology today, it is necessary to have a global vision of the Earth and the Universe, knowing that this discipline is still a field science. Observations, whatever the scale, from large regional structures (thanks to remote sensing satellites) to minerals (using the microscope and the microprobe) are always necessary.

This 16th edition of the excellent classic teaching of geology is the subject of a significant geological update. It offers the reader a journey that begins with the Big Bang and ends in Prehistory, passing through all the disciplines of the Sciences of the Earth. It also takes the reader through the Environment (astronomy, oceanography, climate, geodynamics, structural geology, geomorphology, geophysics, glaciology, hydrogeology, mineralogy, petrography, sedimentology, plate tectonics, etc.).

This very complete and one of the best geology books is intended for undergraduate and graduate students in Earth Sciences or Geography.

2. The Amateur Geologist’s Guide (Alain Foucault)

During a mountain hike or a walk on the edge of a plowed field, almost everyone has the urge to pick up a fossil, a rock, a mineral. Thus begin a collection and the desire to know more about its discovery.

Thanks to this guide, rich in more than 500 illustrations, an amateur geologist will find all the indications to associate a name with the mineral or the rock observed at the edge of the path.

This book is among the best geology books, and it has a chapter devoted to fossils with criteria for recognizing the family and the species and thus apprehending their environment and age.

Another chapter gives the keys to understanding the landscape and discovering the many clues that will allow the reader to reconstruct the history of a site.

3. Introduction To Geology – The Dynamics Of The Earth (Gilbert Boillot, Philippe Huchon, Yves Lagabrielle)

Studying the forces and movements animating our planet (plate tectonics, volcanism, etc.) constitutes geodynamics. This approach to geology consists in describing phenomena, but above all, in understanding them.

As one of the best geology books which explain geodynamics’ main concepts, these concepts are illustrated by examples (Hawaii, Red Sea, Taiwan, Corinthian rift, West Indies, Norwegian margin, ophiolites from Oman and New Caledonia, etc.). This is described in nearly fifty cards placed at the end of each chapter.

The updated edition presents three additional example information: plate kinematics, subsidence of sedimentary basins, sequential stratigraphy, and analysis of sedimentary basins.