Deep Oakland; How Geology Shaped a City.
Heyday, 2025. Cunningham, Laura. Paper Back. Item #26478 "Deep Oakland is a gorgeous book of poetic observations about the geology and people of Oakland. I've never felt more in touch with the reality of deep time than when reading this work." —Alexis Madrigal, author of The Pacific Circuit and cohost of KQED Forum
ISBN: 9781597146791
When we look at the history of a city, rarely do we see it from the “ground down,” says Andrew Alden—but it’s there that the story of any place truly begins. In Deep Oakland: How Geology Shaped A City, Alden surveys with winking insight and contagious enthusiasm the distinctive terrain of Oakland, California, revealing how quaking rocks, alluvial fans, and bubbling magma have formed the lands and the lives of everyone who has tread upon them since time immemorial. Throughout, Alden traces how Oakland’s layered natural history has formed and been formed by all who have stepped upon it, from the oak-grove-dwelling Ohlone to the 19th-century squatters who incorporated the town, to today’s urban melting pot. Bearing the vatic scale of geologic time in mind, Alden encourages his readers to think, like the Town’s first peoples did, seven generations ahead and imagine how human action may shape this city’s landscape in the next half-century to come.
Price: $20.00