• Approachable, easy-to-read style that looks at topics in geology in relation to the big picture without being bogged down in excessive details
• Includes crucial, contemporary research on tectonics and sedimentation, basin analysis, sequence stratigraphy, stable isotope stratigraphy, new methods of geochronology
• Includes topics normally neglected in other texts, such as trace fossils, mudrocks, diagentetic structures, volcaniclastic rocks, the theory of stratigraphic accumulation unconformities, and seismic stratigraphy