The Book of Unconformities by Hugh Raffles – Trailer

A journey across eons and continents, The Book of Unconformities is also a journey through stone: Neolithic stone circles, Icelandic lava, mica from a Nazi concentration camp, petrified whale blubber in Svalbard, the marble prized by Manhattan’s Lenape, and a huge Greenlandic meteorite that arrived in New York City along with six Inuit adventurers in 1897.

“Among the most mysterious books I’ve ever read — a dense, dark star.” – New York Times

“What intuition the book requires, what detective work — and what magic tricks it performs.” – New York Times

“A spellbinding time travelogue…mesmerizing.” – Harper’s

“So rich in erudition and prose-poetry that I read it like a glutton, tearing off big bites of lost time until I was sated.” – The Wall Street Journal

“Vivid. . . Exquisite. . . A poignant and healing descent into deep time and its relevance to the human experience.” – The Wall Street Journal

“Erudite and artistic.” – Library Journal

“As panoptical and sparking as the crystal contained in many of the author’s objects of study.” – Kirkus Reviews (starred)

Hugh Raffles is an anthropologist and writer whose work explores relationships among people, animals, and things. He is Professor of Anthropology at The New School in New York. His writing has appeared in academic and popular venues, including Granta, Public Culture, Natural History, Orion, American Ethnologist, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and The Best American Essays.