Strata: Stories from Deep Time

by Laura Poppick

Overview

"[A]n extraordinary book." —Marcia Bjornerud, author of Turning to Stone

A revelatory journey through four moments in Earth’s deep past, and their lessons for our future.

The epic stories of our planet’s 4.54-billion-year history are written in strata—ages-old remnants of ancient seafloors, desert dunes, and riverbeds striping landscapes around the world. In this brilliantly original debut work, science writer Laura Poppick decodes strata to lead us on a journey through four global transformations that made our lives on Earth possible: the first accumulations of oxygen in the atmosphere; the deep freezes of "Snowball Earth"; the rise of mud on land and accompanying proliferation of plants; and the dinosaurs’ reign on a hothouse planet

Poppick introduces us to the researchers who have devoted their careers to understanding the events of deep time, including the world’s leading stegosaur scientist. She travels to sites as various as a Minnesotan iron mine that runs half a mile deep and a corner of the Australian Outback where glacial deposits date from the coldest times on Earth. Ultimately, she demonstrates that the planet’s oceans, continents, atmosphere, life, and ice have always conspired to bring stability to Earth, even if we are only just beginning to understand how these different facets interact.

A work in the tradition of John McPhee, Strata allows us to observe how the planet has responded to past periods of environmental upheaval, and shows how Earth’s ancient narratives could hold lessons for our present and future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324021605
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/15/2025
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Laura Poppick is a science and environmental journalist whose writing has appeared in the New York Times, Smithsonian, Scientific American, Wired, Audubon, National Geographic, Science, and elsewhere. She has been listed as a finalist for the National Association of Science Writers Science in Society Journalism Award and the Maine Literary Awards Short Works Competition in Nonfiction, among others. She lives in Portland, Maine.

Editorial Reviews

"Poppick paints a fascinating word picture of dramatic change, the hallmark of billions of year of Earth’s history—all written in the layers, thick and thin, of the rock beneath our feet. Read her words and know the stories she tells provide solace that change has always been part of Earth’s DNA—but rarely at the breakneck speed at which people are altering the planet today."

Paul Bierman

"Laura Poppick takes readers deep into the minds of geologists working to interpret the sedimentary chronicles of four critical 'moments' in Earth's past. Revealing the logic used to decode the rock record—and the reasons geologists sometimes disagree about the details of the translation—Strata is an extraordinary book."

Marcia Bjornerud

"It is one thing for a book to transform your knowledge of the world, and another for its lyricism to shape how you perceive yourself in it, too. Reading Laura Poppick’s Strata felt like being gifted a pair of magic glasses through which I could not only revel anew in our planet’s geology, but understand myself—and our warming future—within it."

Erica Berry

"In Laura Poppick’s wise and wonderfully observant Strata, Earth is not a static stage but an epic told in silt, sand, and microscopic fossils. A rare and exhilarating view of our ever-changing planet."

Michelle Nijhuis

"Like the earth itself, Strata is a work of many layers. It’s about the deep past, about how geologists work and think, about the great changes that have taken place in geological history and the ones that lie ahead. Laura Poppick is an elegant writer and an intrepid reporter."

Elizabeth Kolbert

"Rock has never felt more alive, nor deep time more current, than in Laura Poppick’s absorbing, illuminating Strata…This book is an indispensable guide to the dynamic stories our planet writes in stone."

Ben Goldfarb

"In prose as graceful and clear as a mountain stream, Laura Poppick guides us on a journey through the stone palimpsest that is Earth’s crust. . . . Thoroughly researched, lovingly crafted, and eminently approachable."

Ferris Jabr

"Strata, like its subject, is deep and richly layered with stories—of the planet, and of the people doggedly trying to decipher the tales locked within its rocks. It left me with a profound appreciation of our world, and the sheer amount of history upon which we stand."

Ed Yong

"Traipsing through ancient mud flows and across the frozen rind of early Earth, and imagining the origins of our atmosphere along with its searing hot future, Laura Poppick introduces us to a cast of characters working to peel back the layers of Earth history. Threads of memoir and poetry remind us that while the work of geology is timeless, it happens on personal timescales. In the tradition of our best natural history writers, Poppick understands the true gift of geology is the perspective of deep time, where we come to understand that not even stone is indelible. Strata offers a reminder that the things which connect us, and will outlast us all, are deeper still: the iron in our blood, the oxygen we breathe, and the stories we tell."

Rebecca Boyle

2025-04-16
Looking at what lies beneath.

This book about Earth’s endless stacks of rock and sediment begins with a quote from famed environmentalist Rachel Carson. “The sediments are a sort of epic poem of the earth. When we are wise enough, perhaps we can read in them all of past history.” Author Poppick, a science journalist, methodically, yet gracefully, brings the reader through much of that now-understood past. As she writes, “Beyond an accrual of knowledge, I have found that my own understanding of strata has given me a deeper and still deepening love of Earth in all its layered complexity.” Since Carson’s death, in 1964, Poppick notes, we have found that oxygen appeared only halfway through Earth’s existence, when cyanobacteria, the “greatest environmental engineers in the planet’s history,” began using solar energy to “turn sunshine into sugar” by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. The following eruptions of oxygen, when aided by the rise of “solar panels” of protective manganese, let cyanobacteria rewrite “the chemical composition of the Earth from the seafloor to stratosphere,” ultimately generating literal oceans of multicellular life. Turgid but relentless glacier invasions then dislodged and stirred that life to “explode and diversify.” And the mud that oozed out of rewarming oceans finally expelled life onto land. Understanding how the Earth reacts to change wasn’t always considered central. Now, in the era of climate change, it is viewed as vital. For the ancient past has taught us that ecosystems can adapt to change at a slow rate. “But,” Poppick concludes, quoting a farsighted geologist, “the minute you start ramping the rates up, that’s when we start seeing extinctions.”

A lyrical book that will appeal to science and literature buffs alike.

Kirkus Reviews