Problems and Solutions on Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics Book

Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth is a fascinating look at one of the most basic and seemingly boring topics: dirt. As the name implies, William Bryant Logan makes the inanimate ground beneath our feet come alive with excitement as he explains the ways that soil is dynamic and ever-changing. Slow as this change might be, the world will never be the same after reading Logan's book.

Dirt, derived from dritten, an uncouth word for manure in Old Norse, has a highly misleading and boring name in the English vocabulary. As the author tells us, dirt is not simple: it is itself alien to our solar system, only arriving on Earth some far off place in the galaxy; the Sun can only produce helium. This unique compound of materials on the surface, mostly the remains of once living plant and animal life, breaks down in to humus and is naturally churned by the Earth over centuries and millennia, returning some minerals to living plants and insects, while most is compacted to form deeper horizons or eventually rock. As rock and dirt is pushed further down, it eventually will melt in to magma, and someday will erupt with a burst, returning a plethora of minerals and new, 'living' material to the Earth's surface.

Far from a textbook explanation of this process, Logan draws from a variety of sources in all disciplines who have addressed dirt in some way, with a mixture of his own personal stories thrown in. Highly personal and always entertaining, William Bryant Logan draws the reader in and subtly points out an unfortunate truth of modernity and human interaction with the Earth we walk on. No man can make a person feel such compassion for the inanimate materials we tread on every day like Logan does.