Structural and Tectonic Principles, by Peter Badgley of the Scientific Staff of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, is another volume in the Harper&Row Geoscience Series that is marked by a number of innovations, chief of which is the synthesis of the study of structural geology and tectonics in a single text. As Dr. Badgley suggests, structural geology in the strict sense probably should be limited to the study of such structures as anticlines, thrust faults, lineation, and the like, as they occur within a tectonic entity. Tectonics, on the other hand, probably should be considered to include investigations of the form pattern, and evolution of largescale units of the earth’s crust, such as basins, folded belts, forelands, and continental shelves—in short, the globe’s major features. American authors, such as Billings, Leith, Nevin, and Willis, have written well-known undergraduate texts that deal mainly with structural geology in the somewhat limited sense. Geologists with an Old World educational background, such as Beloussov, Umbgrove, and Bucher, have written more advanced-level texts that deal mainly with tectonics as herein defined. <...>
