Part 1: Contribution of Geochemistry to the Study of the Earth, 1
1. Geochemistry and Secular Geochemical Evolution of the Earth’s Mantle and Lower Crust Balz S. Kamber
2. Crustal Evolution – A Mineral Archive Perspective C.J. Hawkesworth, A.I.S. Kemp, B. Dhuime and C.D. Storey

3. Discovering the History of Atmospheric Oxygen Heinrich D. Holland
4. Geochemistry of the Oceanic Crust Karsten M. Haase

The title Fundamentals and Applications of Rock Mechanics deals with the foundation of mechanics applied to rock engineering. It is a discipline firmly engaged with the basic and applied researches and activities comprising mining, civil constructions and foundations, dams, vehicular and hydroelectric tunnels, caverns, slope stability, underground storage facilities for foods, fuels, and waste material, underground disposal of municipal and radioactive waste, petroleum wellbore and others. The term ‘rock mechanics’ signifies the basic sciences of mechanics applied to rock and rock masses. It is also a discipline which analyses the stability of structures made of/on the rock masses.

Seismology has been defined as “the science based on data called seismograms” (Aki and Richards, 1980). The definition misses the urgency of human suffering caused by the complex phenomena called earthquakes. It also tends to restrict membership of our club to people who know their way around seismograms, rather than to those who make use of other kinds of input such as theoretical physics, fault displacements, or time series of seismic events. Actually seismograms tell us far less about earthquakes than we need to know. They are like unreliable couriers sent abroad with a long complicated message: By the time they get to their destination they tell us all about the incidents along the way but the original message has been forgotten.<...>

The reader probably is acquainted with some books of the series: Physics for Everybody, Chemistry for Everybody, Mechanics for Everybody, Algebra for Everybody, Geometry for Everybody and Arithmetic for Everybody. In the form of short stories, these books write of the interesting processes and phenomena that take place in nature, and describe unique mechanisms; they answer riddles in mathematics, physics, chemistry and mechanics, put posers, and explain the fundamentals of some sciences in a simple and entertaining manner. Academician A. E. Fersman in his Mineralogy for Everyone, which has had a run of several editions, has shown that this seemingly dry subject, with its enumerations of minerals, their forms, properties and occurrence, is quite fascinating. He has made rocks come alive and has told of their varied uses in everyday life and in technology. The author transports his readers to mountains, quarries and mines, to a fairyland of minerals and crystals. <...>