Longlisted for the 2026 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award One of NPR's "Books We Love" for 2025 A Scientific American Staff Favorite for 2025 A revelatory journey through four moments in Earth's deep past, and their lessons for our future. The epic stories of our planet's 4.54-billion-year history are written in strata--ages-old remnants of ancient seafloors, desert dunes, and riverbeds striping landscapes around the world. In this brilliantly original debut work, science writer Laura Poppick decodes strata to lead us on a journey through four global transformations that made our lives on Earth possible: the first accumulations of oxygen in the atmosphere; the deep freezes of "Snowball Earth"; the rise of mud on land and accompanying proliferation of plants; and the dinosaurs' reign on a hothouse planet Poppick introduces us to the researchers who have devoted their careers to understanding the events of deep time, including the world's leading stegosaur scientist. She travels to sites as various as a Minnesotan iron mine that runs half a mile deep and a corner of the Australian Outback where glacial deposits date from the coldest times on Earth. Ultimately, she demonstrates that the planet's oceans, continents, atmosphere, life, and ice have always conspired to bring stability to Earth, even if we are only just beginning to understand how these different facets interact.

A work in the tradition of John McPhee, Strata allows us to observe how the planet has responded to past periods of environmental upheaval, and shows how Earth's ancient narratives could hold lessons for our present and future.