Exploring Our Living Planet

Washington D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1983. First Edition Stated . Hard Back. Very Good/Very Good. 9 X 11 1/4. 366 Pages Indexed. The dust jacket is a fiery red while the book has green boards with metallic green lettering and green decoration to the front board. This 1983 First Edition of 240,000 copies has 176 Illustrations, 97 Paintings, Diagrams, and Maps. Most pages have color photographs. The date "Jun 28 1983" is stamped on the front endpaper. Author Robert D. Ballard's investigation of Iceland's recent Krafla volcano eruptions was one of scores of geological field trips that have taken Dr. Ballard around the globe, including several to gather material for this book. As an active scientist whose creative drive has quickened the pace of seafloor research, Dr. Ballard is known principally for his explorations of the Mid-Ocean Ridge, our planet's largest geological feature - and understandably one of its least known. Diving 2.5 kilometers down into the Pacific in 1977, he and fellow scientists discovered giant clams and tube worms, part of a hidden community of organisms dependent not on the light of the sun but on the heat of Earth's interior. Dr. Ballard, age 40, received his doctorate in marine geology and geophysics from the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography. Contents: Discovery of Planet Earth, Birth of an African Ocean, The Mountains of the Sea, Land of Ice and Fire, Earth's Fountains of Heat, On the Grindstone Edges, The Ring of Fire Ashes and Empires, and When Continents Collide.