As soon as the second edition of Principles of Soil Chemistry appeared, it was sought after by many scholars, students, professionals, and scientists interested in the chemistry of soils. It was chosen as the textbook at the University of Georgia for teaching the senior-level undergraduate and graduate course in soil chemistry. It has been used as a textbook in soil chemistry at the University of California, Davis, and other universities in the United States. Because of its simple language and style, which avoid making problems more complex than needed without sacrificing scientific standards, the book is particularly appealing as a textbook in many universities overseas. The first edition of Principles of Soil Chemistry was translated in Indonesian and published by the University of Gadjah Mada Press, Yogyakarta, under the title Dasar-Dasar Kimia Tanah, which soon sold out and is out of press. I was invited to teach Soil Chemistry and Soil Genesis courses for a semester in 1996 at the University of Andalas, Padang, Sumatra, Indonesia, and in 1995 at the Universidad Nacional del Sur, Bahia Blanca, Argentina, where my first and then the second edition were adopted as the main textbook for these courses.

Stratigraphy is one of the most demanding, fundamental, and interesting of geologic disciplines. It tries to reconstruct history with a few basic principles, requires both careful observation and wide-ranging imagination, and involves many individually fascinating subdisciplines. Yet, as the quotation above shows, this is not how it appears to many people. Stratigraphy has a poor image because it is sometimes presented only as a way of classifying and organizing strata with “codes.”

Principles of Structural Geology is designed to be a concise introduction to the deformation of the earth’s crust, encompassing the wide-ranging subject matter of introductory courses in structural geology. Three principal aspects of structural geology are emphasized:
1.    The basic principles of natural rock deformation are presented in Part II, Principles of Deformation (Chapters 3, 4, and 5), including stress, strain, and the physical processes of elastic, plastic, and brittle deformation of rock.

Structural geology may be defined as a study of the framework of the earth's crust and the causes that are distorting it. However, in its broader phases, structural geology deals with deformation of the entire earth and is not limited merely to the crust. Although we see only a thin rind and although information about the greater bulk of the earth, the unseen vast interior, must of necessity be based on indirect evidence— yet it is to deep-seated adjustments that many of the surface crumplings arc attributed. The central theme of structural geology, then, is the deformation of the earth, its causes and effects. Unerring interpretation of observed rock structures is the goal sought.

At the outset, any idea of immobility of the earth should be dismissed from our minds. The crust oscillates to the rise and fall of the tides. Continual shifting of enormous sedimentary loads through the agencies of erosion, transportation, and deposition is attended by both deep-seated and surface adjustments. The shape of the earth itself is largely a response to the rate of axial spinning; modify the speed of rotation, and a corresponding change in the earth's shape, with attendant deformation of the crust, would inevitably follow. In short, the earth is not inert but is ceaselessly changing, and complete rigidity has no place in structural geology.

Beginning students of geology soon realize that the earth's crust has failed many times and in many places. Mountains of folded rock have been pushed up thousands of feet; enormous areas of relatively undisturbed formations have been gently tilted; beds once forming below ocean level have been raised several miles above their place of origin. All these and a host of other examples present a clear picture of tremendous masses moved great distances. The total forces involved in these distortions must have been stupendous, and we arc prone to think that this is all of the distant past — surely no major deformation of the earth is going on today or we should be able to see and measure it.

Indeed, there seems to be a rather general assumption that the earth is now passing through a stage of relative quiet, resting, as it were, after widespread recent deformations. Thus, the present is considered by many to be a poor key with which to unlock the structural mysteries of the past. <...>