Soil is essential to human life, but we pay little attention to this miracle of nature. The author explains the science and the importance of soil, what it is and what it does, with a description of how soils have evolved over the past 3.5 billion years.
This book shows that most rocks and minerals are composed of just 8 chemical elements, and describes how events such as the formation of continents, oxygenation of the atmosphere, glaciation, colonization of the land by plants, and the evolution of roots led to the appearance new kinds of soil at different times in Earth's history.