Origins

“Of course, each of us is literally made of the Earth, as is all of the planet. The water in your body once flowed down the Nile, fell as monsoon rain onto India and swirled around the Pacific. The carbon in the organic molecules of your cells was mined from the atmosphere by the plants that we eat. The salt in your sweat and tears, the calcium in your bones, and the iron in your blood all eroded out of the rocks of Earth’s crust; and the sulphur of the protein molecules in your hair and muscles was spewed out by volcanoes.”  (p.1)

April 2020
Overall verdict: ★ ★ ★ ★
To buy this book, click here.

Why this book?
Full disclosure: Lewis had contacted me through Twitter and asked to meet to discuss how his recent book ‘Origins’ could be useful to geography teachers. He thus kindly gifted me a copy of the book and I took it away to read- unable to put it down once I started. The sub-title of the book is ‘How the Earth shaped human history’ and that is certainly what this book does- it takes you on a whirlwind tour of our planet and how fundamental physical processes have been in shaping our human society. Immediately, you can see why it a must-read for any geography teacher or inquisitive student…

For students:
Just reading the paragraph above (taken from the introduction) will ignite your curiosity and leave you wanting to know more- right? In this book Lewis explains just how much our history is shaped by planet Earth and thus, without realising it, cements geography as the must-study subject that it is.  What do wind patterns have to do with colonialism? What does London connectivity have to do with geology? How can US voting patterns be linked to vegetation growth? All of these questions (and so many more!) are answered in ‘Origins’.

For teachers:
Bring on the next time that a student dares to ask why they should care about geology because I am armed! One of my highlights of this book is on p.155 when Lewis unwittingly provides the answer to every ‘Miss, why should I care about rock type?’ question EVER again. And for me, that sums up the beauty of this book, although it is factual and dense in places, it is always related to human society and to answering the ‘big questions’ about our planet.

To buy this book, click here.