Rocks and Their Origins

An accessible introduction to petrology that explains how rocks are classified, described, and traced to their origins using field observation, microscopy, and experiment. It surveys common rock-forming minerals and treats limestones, sandstones, clays and shales, igneous rocks, and metamorphic rocks in turn, showing how rock properties influence landscape and record depositional and tectonic processes. Emphasis is placed on reading outcrops, weathering and sediment transport, and on the laboratory and theoretical methods used to infer rock histories, with practical examples and photographs to guide non-specialist readers toward further study.