How did the Sierra Nevada and adjacent lands come to be the size and shape they are today? This book covers 400 million years of physical evolution in a language understandable to nonscientists, tracing the volcanic activity, the folding and building of mountains, the breaking of blocks along fault lines, and the work of erosion and glaciers that have created today's dramatic landscape.

Cordell Durrell spent a lifetime reading this complex story of movement and change in the rocks of the Feather River country. He shares with readers the excitement of discovering by remote but careful...