Sept. 3, 2024 – Interesting story in the New Yorker about Marcia Bjornerud, a professor of geosciences at Lawrence University in Wisconsin and her newest book, “Turning to Stone.” Each of the book’s 10 chapters is structured around a variety of rock that provides the context for a particular era of her life, from childhood to the present day. The result is one of the more unusual memoirs of recent memory, combining personal history with a detailed account of the building blocks of the planet. What the two halves of this tale share is an interest in the evolution of existence—in the forces, both quotidian and cosmic, that shape us.