Mistaken for Granite

Mistaken for Granite, on the left is aimed at a more adult audience, and it was started first, but I set it aside while I did the version for young people first. Each of the two books explores some of the strange things the planet sets before us, like rocks that float, rocks that flow and rocks that bend. That said, there's a lot more geology in this one.

Each of the two books takes a strong stand on the importance of Earth Science in the future of humanity. I am a grandfather, and I want a decent world for my grandchildren.

As this is written, the e-book of Mistaken for Granite is available, and so is the paperback.

Navigation:

Acknowledgements | Who is it for? | The Blog (extras)
Where to order it. | Chapter titles | Extra pictures for teaching and stuff

A note from the author

Here you will meet many sorts of rocks, including a few surprises, like a rock that floats. I also look at rocks that fold, rocks that fault, climate change a volcano at Bondi, and quite a few other things. I hope you will have a great deal more fun from this book. I certainly had fun writing it.

Where to get it

As an e-book

The e-book in Australia;
The e-book in the UK;
The e-book in the USA;
The e-book in Canada;
The e-book in France;
The e-book in Germany;
The e-book in Spain;
The e-book in India;
The e-book in Japan;

As a paperback

The paperback is only orderable from certain countries. It is only ever in English, though. Why am I self-publishing? Basically, my alpha publisher has succumbed to an attack of the bean counters, and with the onset of Covid-19, what passes for the spine of the average publisher has gone to jelly. (If you are not an average publisher, talk to me!

The paperback in the USA;
The paperback in the UK;
The paperback in the Canada;
The paperback in the France;
The paperback in the Germany;
The paperback in the Italy;
The paperback in the Spain;
The paperback in the Japan;

As a free (but lo-res) sample

You can also find a 50% sample of the book as a low-res pdf at this link. This is free, and it won't be there for long.

Thanks

The main helpers were my family: mainly the ones who patiently waited while I took many of the photographs for this work: Christine Macinnis who was there for all of them (and read all of this), and friends Lyn and Warren Kidson who were there for a large number of the Sydney ones, and cousins Anne, Terence and David Lemmon, who stood still for quite a few, across four states. Angus and Cate Macinnis helped me collect wombat bones, and Angus and Duncan Macinnis made two deep forays with me into the Budawangs, seeking an elusive unconformity. In the end, they made a third trip, without me, to get the shot I needed. Cate found me New Zealand sites, and Brianna and Alastair came with me for some of them. It has been a family show.

Laura Hicks let me use her photos of Sideling Hill, and the nice people at 'Inside the Volcano' let me use Benjamin Hardman's picture of the interior of Þríhnúkagígur.
My grand-niece Annie, gave me a different answer about pumice and also found more pumice for me.

Sanctuary colleague, Geoff Lambert was good enough to share with me his estimates for the North Head rock fall, which was probably about 950 square metres and the height (if no overhang, was an average of 33 m, giving us a volume of 31000 cubic metres, translating to a mass of ~75,000 tons of rock.

Chapter headings:

• A preamble about a scramble.
• Background to earth science.
• 1: How the earth was made.
• 2: Deep rocks.
• 3: How rocks wear away
• 4: Spicks and specks.
• 5: Rocks in beds.
• 6: Changing rocks.
• 7: Things going wrong.
• 8: Rocks that ignore the rules.
• 9: Water and geology.
• 10: Rocks that were once alive.
• 11. Making money from rocks.
• 12: Thinking about rocks.
• 13. Why dropping rocks on toes hurts.
• 14. Oh dear, is that the time?
• 15. End-of-the-earth science.
• 16. The end.
• 17. Glossary.

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Who should read this?

This is a book for people who wonder why rocks are as they are. Here, among other everyday things, you will find tales of wells that go (slightly) uphill; rivers that flow underground; ancient recycling; rotten rocks; pretty rocks; how and when rocks were made; waves and beaches; rocks that float, fall, bounce, bend and tip over; asteroids; hoodoos; Liesegang rings; falling things and weighing the planet; plate tectonics; crystals; lightning as a destroyer of rocks; glaciers; mud; sand dunes; caves; tombs; soil; and where to find a fortune in gold.

Those are the stories the rocks can tell, if you know how to read them. The rocks won't tell you (but this book does) about poets, playwrights and plagiarists; mad (maybe) and devious (certainly) scientists; altitude sickness; ringing bells in Boston; walking on and inside volcanoes; elephants in stiletto heels; golf in space; rocks in exotic locations; a tourist authority conspiracy; a quiz show that got it wrong; the art of making aqueducts; finding water in a desert; poison wells; fat strippers and oil wells; hot spots; fake fossils; pretending to be a wizard in Coimbra in Portugal (where the undergraduates wear Harry Potter cloaks); how (and why) the author smuggled a fossil; stone fortifications, monuments, bridges and buildings; rock inscriptions and art, and what they tell us; behaving oddly in art galleries; mapping the planet's surface and interior; gravity and finding exoplanets; telling the truth about cholera and lies about SARS; why climate matters and how we (and the world) will probably end, possibly sooner than we think. There are also brief references to dragons and pixies, but only in a soundly geological context.

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Instructions for use

If you are using the print version, the images are half-tone, but for ABES, I provided some useful teaching pictures for educators to use. Some of those appear in this book.

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Freebie extras!

I don't waste the out-takes, though.

The dropped items are now appearing, bit by bit, in my writing blog, Old Writer on the Block. Remember: it may not be all that hard or risky: we just had too much material. Poke around there, and notice the tags that I attach to the entries to help readers to zero in on particular types of entry. In particular, follow the "Earth Science" tag.

There's more! Extra pics for teaching and study

These are large format copies of pictures I either used in the book, or reluctantly left out. All pictures are under a Creative Commons copyright allows non-commercial use in any form, with attribution and share-alike.

To get any picture, right-click on it and use 'Save Image As'. The file names are all sufficiently explicit: if you happen to need higher resolution, find me on email and ask nicely, including that file name.

Teaching Pictures 1
Teaching Pictures 2
Teaching Pictures 3
Teaching Pictures 4
Teaching Pictures 5
Teaching Pictures 6

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This file is http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/writing/mistaken.htm

It was created on March 2, 2020 (the day after I published) and last updated March 3, 2020.

If you email me at macinnis at ozemail.com.au, you will reach a spam trap, but you will be read, eventually, probably maybe. If you put my first name in front of that address (so it reads petermacinnis), you will reach me much faster and more surely. This low-tech solution is to make email harvesting difficult. I am generally willing to talk to interesting humans. Spammers miss out twice on fitting that specification.

The home page of this set is here.