Describes how scientists arrived at the theory of plate tectonics and presents an overview of what it teaches, discussing the formation of volcanoes, the movement of the continents, the cause of earthquakes, and other related subjects.

"A fascinating primer on the scientific theory that provides a single guiding principle to the Earth's geologic history: that a number of mobile lithospheric plates are continuously changing and rearranging the face of the Earth"--Page 4 of cover.

"You have heard of Pangea, the single landmass that broke apart some 175 million years ago to give us our current continents. What about its previous iterations, Rodinia or Columbia? These "supercontinents" from Earth's past provide evidence that continents repeatedly join and divorce. Scientists debate exactly what that next supercontinent will look like (and what to name it), but they agree that one is coming. In this book, Ross Mitchell, a geophysicist...