To see accurate pricing, please choose your delivery country.
 
 
United States
£ GBP
All Shops

British Wildlife

8 issues per year 84 pages per issue Subscription only

British Wildlife is the leading natural history magazine in the UK, providing essential reading for both enthusiast and professional naturalists and wildlife conservationists. Published eight times a year, British Wildlife bridges the gap between popular writing and scientific literature through a combination of long-form articles, regular columns and reports, book reviews and letters.

Subscriptions from £33 per year

Conservation Land Management

4 issues per year 44 pages per issue Subscription only

Conservation Land Management (CLM) is a quarterly magazine that is widely regarded as essential reading for all who are involved in land management for nature conservation, across the British Isles. CLM includes long-form articles, events listings, publication reviews, new product information and updates, reports of conferences and letters.

Subscriptions from £26 per year
Good Reads  Earth System Sciences  Geosphere  Earth & Planetary Sciences: General

Notes from Deep Time A Journey Through Our Past and Future Worlds

Nature Writing
By: Helen Gordon(Author)
322 pages, no illustrations
Publisher: Profile Books
NHBS
Notes from Deep Time is a diverse and beautiful collection of writings that tackles this hard-to-grasp concept in myriad ways.
Notes from Deep Time
Click to have a closer look
Average customer review
  • Notes from Deep Time ISBN: 9781788161640 Paperback Feb 2022 In stock
    £6.50 £9.99
    #254454
Price: £6.50
About this book Customer reviews Biography Related titles

About this book

From the secret fossils of London to the 3-billion-year-old rocks of the Scottish Highlands, and from state-of-the-art Californian laboratories to one of the world's most dangerous volcanic complexes hidden beneath the green hills of western Naples, set out on an adventure to those parts of the world where the Earth's life-story is written into the landscape.

Helen Gordon turns a novelist's eye on the extraordinary scientists who are piecing together this planetary drama. She gets to grips with the theory that explains how it all works – plate tectonics, a breakthrough as significant in its way as evolution or quantum mechanics, but much younger than either, and still with many secrets to reveal. And she looks to the future of our world, with or without us.

Customer Reviews (1)

  • What do we talk about when we talk about deep time?
    By Leon (NHBS Catalogue Editor) 4 Mar 2022 Written for Paperback


    Deep time is, to me, one of the most awe-inspiring concepts to come out of the earth sciences. Getting to grips with the incomprehensibly vast stretches of time over which geological processes play out is not easy. We are, in the words of geologist Marcia Bjornerud, naturally chronophobic. In Notes from Deep Time, author Helen Gordon presents a diverse and fascinating collection of essay-length chapters that give 16 different answers to the question: "What do we talk about when we talk about deep time?" This is one of those books whose title is very appropriate.

    For Gordon, a chance encounter with an outdoor information board during a walk on the North Downs near London ignites her interest in deep time. Before long, she is visiting museums and interviewing earth scientists and palaeontologists. Notes from Deep Time is thus very relatable to a general audience who, like Gordon, are not geologists. A few of the 16 chapters in this book have previously been published, but most are new. She has organised them around three topics: geology, extinct life, and the intersection of deep time with human affairs. Having introduced the concept of deep time and how the age of the Earth was slowly uncovered, she delves into palaeoclimatology, stratigraphy, plate tectonics, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, dinosaurs, the Anthropocene, palaeoart, urban geology, nuclear waste, etc.

    One enjoyable aspect is that Gordon brings in new perspectives, even for topics I was familiar with. When discussing ice cores, she explains the work of pioneer Willi Dansgaard and his discovery of rapid climatic changes subsequently named Dansgaard-Oeschger events. Initially eyed suspiciously by scientists, the idea was soon enough corroborated by evidence from pollen records and ocean sediments. Her discussion of dinosaurs is equally novel, and appropriately titled "what we talk about when we talk about dinosaurs". She asks why children are so fascinated by them, how fossil dig sites have changed over time, how the palaeontological community is torn over the trade in fossils, and how the story of their extinction forms "an irresistible backdrop onto which to project our own fears of climate change and contemporary apocalypse" (p. 196), something explored further in Sepkoski's Catastrophic Thinking. When visiting a dinosaur trackway in Utah, she reminds the reader that it is easy to lose sight of the beasts themselves. "Bombarded with plastic figurines and dinosaur memes, familiarity stops me really seeing a dinosaur. [...] Touching the edges of one of the theropod's lozenge-shaped toes, 150 million years almost dissolve in the hot desert air. There really were dinosaurs here. For a moment that fact becomes amazing once again" (p. 198-199).

    I furthermore appreciated how Gordon pays attention to the subtleties and technicalities of topics. In two chapters she takes a surprisingly deep yet accessible dive into stratigraphy. In 2018, a terrible ruckus broke out when some stratigraphers proposed subdividing our current epoch, the Holocene, into three new ages, the most recent one being called the Meghalayan. Partially this was because others are still working on the stratigraphical case for the Anthropocene. She listens to the arguments put forth by both proponents and opponents of these concepts. She goes into a similar level of nuanced detail when discussing colour as deduced from exceptionally well-preserved fossils. The focus has so far been on melanosomes and the pigment melanin, but Gordon also interviews Maria McNamara who is looking at carotenoid pigmentation and structural colours. These discoveries allow palaeoartists to make more true-to-life reconstructions. An open-hearted conversation with palaeoartist Robert Nicholls touches on his Psittacosaurus model, the importance of thorough background research, and his frank opinion that most dinosaur art that gets published is "regurgitated nonsense" (p. 214). And while I had read about the plans for long-term underground storage of nuclear waste in Finland in Macfarlane's Underland, Gordon adds an interesting discussion on the challenges of designing warning signs for distant future generations to stay away from such repositories.

    Some chapters touched on, for me, completely novel subjects. There is a chapter on chalk, one of the least appreciated rock types amongst geologists. Here, she accompanies a team making a new map of the chalk formations underlying parts of Britain. She discusses the primitive fossil trees found in Gilboa in the US, and their unusual mode of growth. Another chapter focuses on the difficulty of predicting earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and highlights that part of the problem is the loss of hard-won knowledge and experience when scientists retire. And she opened my eyes to the phenomenon of urban geology, the idea that the materials used in buildings, especially older ones, can reveal more about local geology.

    What makes this wide-ranging collection of deep-time musings so captivating is Gordon's language and sharp observations. She talks to the Geological Society's librarian who highlights commonalities between poetry and geology: both involve "building worlds in your mind and presenting them to others using descriptive language" (p. 8). When we discuss history, we merrily skip over thousands and millions of years. As Gordon puts it beautifully: "if the human brain naturally compresses the past, then the scientists working with deep time are in the business of decompression" (p. 22). When explaining how the theory of plate tectonics came together, she of course pays homage to Alfred Wegener but cleverly points out that "you can tell the story of plate tectonics in many different ways" (p. 75), depending on whose contributions you focus on. And why, of all the proposed new stratigraphical units, has the Anthropocene taken such hold of the popular imagination? Gordon's answer is that science has been in the business of knocking humans off their pedestal for several centuries. "Considered one way, then, the Anthropocene concept puts humans back at the centre of the world [...] and at some level we can't help finding that attractive – even if the price for that return is environmental disaster" (p. 244). The only thing I felt was missing from this book were illustrations and photos; many of the places and phenomena described here would have benefited from some.

    Notes from Deep Time is a fantastic dive into the deep past of our planet that engages with deep time on many levels. Readers will find at least some, if not many chapters that will thoroughly captivate them and induce that most rare of sensations: "temporal vertigo" (p. 1).
    2 of 3 found this helpful - Was this helpful to you? Yes No

Biography

Helen Gordon's books include a novel, Landfall (Penguin, 2011), and Being A Writer, a compendium written with Travis Elborough (Francis Lincoln, 2017). She is married to an earth scientist and lives mostly in the Holocene.

Nature Writing
By: Helen Gordon(Author)
322 pages, no illustrations
Publisher: Profile Books
NHBS
Notes from Deep Time is a diverse and beautiful collection of writings that tackles this hard-to-grasp concept in myriad ways.
Media reviews

"The reward of Helen Gordon's profoundly considered and far-reaching book is that it opens up the dizzying view of geological time [...] Notes from Deep Time reaches into a place that, in a post-religious era, offers a glimpse of something close to eternity"
– Philip Marsden, FT

"If there were ever a good time to think about deep time, it's now [...] A whirlwind tour of our planet's deep past and far future [...] succeeds in grounding our existence firmly in the context of geological time"
– Alexandra Witze, Nature

"Astounding [...] To call this a "history" does not do justice to Helen Gordon's ambition. Her adventures in the deep time of Earth hark all the way back to its beginnings as a barren ocean planet, 4.4 billion years ago, while keeping one foot firmly planted in the depleted and desertified plaything we're left with today [...] Notes from Deep Time sidesteps the maundering and finger-wagging that comes with much Anthropocene thinking, and shows us how much sheer intellectual and poetical entertainment there is to be had in the idea"
– Simon Ings, Daily Telegraph

"Awe-inspiring [...] It's Gordon's background as a literary writer that takes Notes from Deep Time to the next level. She has imbued geological tales with a beauty and humanity"
– Shaoni Bhattacharya-Woodward, Mail on Sunday

"Notes From Deep Time is a marvel-rich masterclass of narrative non-fiction, one of those books that teaches its reader to see the world completely differently. That it does so with wit, wisdom and crystal-perfect prose only adds to the pleasure. To escape from the present into deep time with such a companionable guide is clarifying, almost therapeutic, and at times gratifyingly dizzying"
– Max Porter, author of Lanny

"If there were ever a good time to think about deep time, it's now [...] A whirlwind tour of our planet's deep past and far future [...] succeeds in grounding our existence firmly in the context of geological time"
– Alexandra Witze, Nature

"Helen Gordon's wonderfully expansive book encompasses a paradoxical fluidity, both tangible and immense, where human witnesses measure out deep time in golden spikes and ammonites, excavating lost seas and saurians for clues as to what we were and who we will be"
– Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan

"A book as multi-layered as the deep-time planet itself"
– Sara Wheeler, author of Terra Incognita

"Sublime [...] a fascinating and thrilling descent into time, human in scale but full of moments of vertiginous wonder"
– Jon Day, author of Homing

"Helen Gordon's terrifically readable book juxtaposes scenes from deep Earth time with telling accounts of how geologists forensically analyse the evidence for this enormous narrative – and looks to the future, too, as humans make their own additions to the planet's strata. Highly recommended"
– Jan Zalasiewicz, author of The Planet in a Pebble

"Questing, thoughtful and profoundly moving, Notes from Deep Time is a remarkable TARDIS of a book"
– Dan Richards, author of Outpost

Current promotions
New and Forthcoming BooksNHBS Moth TrapBritish Wildlife MagazineBuyers Guides