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

The story of the Earth is written into our landscape: it's there in the curves of hills, the colours of stone, surprising eruptions of vegetation. Wanting a fresh perspective on her own life, the writer Helen Gordon set out to read that epic narrative.

Her odyssey takes her from the secret fossils of London to the 3-billion-year-old rocks of the Scottish Highlands, and from a state-of-the-art earthquake monitoring system in California to one of the world's most dangerous volcanic complexes in Naples. At every step, she finds that the apparently solid ground beneath our feet isn't quite as it seems.

Praise:

"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

"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

"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

"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