Regional geology and tectonics.

Regional Geology and Tectonics reflects the many years of experience of the 150 international senior geologists and geophysicists from academia and the petroleum exploration industry who contributed to it. The monumental work is without equal, a massive assemblage of information in three volumes, 13 sections, and 71 chapters. Subject coverage overall relates more to divergent and transform plate boundary and cratonic regions than to convergent plate regions. However, two masterful extended summaries of convergent plate boundary complexes and ocean basins balance and complete global coverage of the three volumes.Volume 1A deals with the Earth's core, mantle, and crust, Phanerozoic volcanism, geologic megaprovinces, geological/geophysical tools, sedimentary histories, seismic stratigraphy, experimental and analog structural models, and geophysics and fluid flow in petroleum systems. Volume 1B includes chapters on gradations between rifts and passive margins, models of evolution of passive margins, rift sequence stratigraphy, carbonate-dominated rifts, active and Cenozoic rifts, Mesozoic and older rifts, and tectonic inversions in rift systems. Subjects covered in volume 1C include salt tectonics, shale tectonics, and at least 20 examples of well-studied basins around the world, such as basins marginal to the Atlantic Ocean, the Arctic, the Mediterranean, New Zealand, Trinidad, Russia and Eurasia, the Pyrenees, Europe, and North and South Africa. Section 3 in this volume, "Global Maps," is most valuable. This section integrates the vast worldwide knowledge on subjects such as geology, topography and bathymetry, plate tectonics, neotectonics, stress and paleostress, plate reconstructions, continental lithosphere and crust, and orogenic systems. This section also covers fold and thrust belts, normal faulting in thrust belts and cratonic areas, hot spots, large igneous provinces, dike swarms, active volcanoes, tectonic settings of igneous provinces, many different types of basins and tectonic systems, orogenic and epeirogenic regions, and more. The volumes are well formatted throughout and include numerous illustrations and approximately 3,000 references. If this reviewer's personal study/library were burning, he would rescue these three volumes first. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals. T. L. T. Grose emeritus, Colorado School of Mines