"An Introduction to Seismology, Earthquakes, and Earth Structure" by Seth Stein and Michael Wysession

Abstract

When Sue Hough asked me to review this new textbook I accepted immediately. I've been watching it mature for almost two decades and am pleased it is now actually published as a real textbook. I first became aware of a much earlier draft when I began teaching and was tasked to teach an introductory seismology course for new graduate students. At that time (early 1980's) there was a major gap in seismology textbooks. Books of the time tended to be highly theoretical and seismocentric or overly descriptive and not very rigorous. The former is a big problem for a course taught in an Earth science department, as an overly theoretical focus can scare off geology students who could benefit from such a course. Seth Stein showed me an early version of this book when I gave a colloquium at Northwestern. I decided to use the manuscript form of the book when I first taught introductory seismology back in 1984 and continued to use various versions of it until Thorne Lay and Terry Wallace's book appeared in 1995. In between, Peter Shearer's book appeared in 1999. Thus, this book now joins a field with two other, similar textbooks that have already filled the void I noted above. I'll attempt to give some comparisons to its competition to help others decide if this book is a good choice for them. This book and its two competitors are all excellent textbooks for a modern, introductory seismology course. …