Most people do not think to observe geology from the sidewalks of a major city, but all David B. Williams has to do is look at building stone in any urban center to find a range of rocks equal to any assembled by plate tectonics. In Stories in Stone, he takes you on explorations to find 3.5-billion-year-old rock that looks like swirled pink-and-black taffy, a gas station made of petrified wood, and a Florida fort that has withstood three hundred years of attacks and hurricanes, despite being made of a stone that has the consistency of a granola bar. Williams also weaves in the cultural history of stone, explaining why a white fossil-rich limestone from Indiana became the only building stone used in all fifty states; how in 1825, the construction of the Bunker Hill Monument led to America’s first commercial railroad; and why when the same kind of marble used by Michelangelo clad a Chicago skyscraper it warped so much after nineteen years that all 44,000 panels of it had to be replaced. This love letter to building stone brings to life the geology you can see in the structures of every city.

With the continuing increase in population, more people are sharing the finite resources of the urban watershed, resulting in new and increasingly complex interactions between humans and the environment. Environmental contamination is a chronic problem-and an expensive one. In urban areas, water and soil contamination poses a threat to public healt

The nine papers in this volume cover the geology beneath Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago, Edmonton, Kansas City, New Orleans, New York City, Toronto, and St. Paul/Minneapolis, and present methods of data gathering that could be used in most cities.

This volume looks at the increasing demand for geoscientific input to planning urban land use, rectifying problems of decay and poor prior procedures, rehabilitating land after the closure of extractive and other industries, designing new constructions, and environmental assessment.

Traditionally our understanding of ancient cities has been approached through archaeological, historical and literary sources, with little regard or understanding of geology or engineering.