Anyone who takes the trouble to look up all the entries that have been filed under "Calcium Carbonate" in a university library will be surprised - if not overwhelmed - by the enormous amount of literature that is concerned in one way or another with this subject. Most of the corresponding books and journals can be assigned to the realms of chemistry, but they also include technical, geological and mineralogical literature. A continued search will eventually unearth works on the history of the arts and architecture. This is because calcium carbonate minerals, be they in the form of chalk, limestone or marble, symbolize defining moments in the history of our culture - the first prehistoric cave drawings in simple coloured chalk, the gigantic limestone blocks used to build the Egyptian pyramids and the marble statues of Michelangelo and Bernini.

Chapter 1: Introduction to Calderas Special Issue Peter W. Lipman, Stephen Self, and Grant Heiken
Chapter 2: Some numerical experiments on the withdrawal of magma from crustal reservoirs Frank J. Spera 
Chapter 3: Volatile oversaturation during the evolution of silicic magma chambers as an eruption triggerStephen Blake
Chapter 4: On the mechanics of caldera resurgence Bruce D. Marsh
Chapter 5: Laboratory studies of volcanic jets Susan Werner Keiffer and Bradford Sturtevant

Chapter 6: Hydrodynamic aspects of caldera-forming eruptions: Numerical models K. H. Wohletz, T. R. McGetchin, M. T. Sandford II, and E. M. Jones 

This book was inspired when I began to teach California geology at the college level and found there were no books suitable for such a course. All the books on the market either were grossly out of date or didn’t discuss the modern understanding of California tectonics. California has one of the most amazing and complex histories of any state in the United States, and so the simplistic approaches of the books currently on the market do not do it justice.

It is over 20 years since this book first appeared and numerous reprints and several foreign language editions are a measure of its success. The colour plates that were specially commissioned for the First Edition have been retained, although presented in a slightly different way, and are supplemented by 17 new plates. There have been significant advances in the geological sciences over the past two decades and the text has been thoroughly revised so as to take account of them. In particular we have tried to ensure that mineral names, chemical formulae and structural data accord to current international practice as recommended by the International Mineralogical Association (IMA).