Bretz's Flood

Did you know that during the last ice age, a glacial lake in Montana drained in a series of cataclysmic floods that unleashed a torrent of water (the largest had 13 times the flow of the Amazon) all the way to the Pacific? True story. I'm not sure how interesting this book would be if you haven't seen the wild, wild landscape of central Washington (look at the Google images for “dry falls washington” to get an idea of the scarred landscape the floods left behind), but if you have, it's a nice meld of geology, biography, and a bit of scientific history. Bretz was the geologist who traversed much of this landscape on foot, and was rewarded for his hard work, careful observations, and good hypothesizing with criticism and contempt from his peers. The personal narrative drags a bit at times (I'll be honest - I was reading this for the flood details, which I found astounding), but Soennichsen has a friendly, conversational tone, and I'm glad he shed light on how this particular bit of our geological history was discovered.