This stance often manifests itself in ways that can alienate those who could most benefit from this book further, the author frequently takes a cynical tone, when a more positive message would reach an audience that is not already part of the choir. Unfortunately, while the book has several positive qualities, many limitations detract from these, the main one being the strong undercurrent of scientism that runs throughout the text. In this vein, Timefulness does drop many pearls of wisdom about both time and systems-thinking, the latter of which is particularly emphasized. Indeed, Bjornerud states, “I’ve written this book in the belief (possibly naïve) that if more people understood our shared history and destiny as Earth-dwellers, we might treat each other, and the planet, better.” (p. With these concerns in mind, I had great expectations from the book: that it would lend some keen insights for my own personal benefit, but also that it would help me to help my students develop a deeper appreciation for geologic time, and the skills for thinking about and solving geological problems where time is a constituent. As a concerned citizen of the Earth, I also realize that many of the problems that face humanity today are geological in nature (mineral and energy resource extraction, clean water, soil erosion, breathable air, climate change, and the various and sundry geologic hazards that threaten human life and property), and can only be solved (or at least mitigated) by understanding the phenomena involved. With this range of teaching experience, I am very familiar with students’ challenges in telling geological time, both in terms of relative dating and sequence of events, and in terms of the sheer magnitude of the age of the Earth and all that exists on it. Educated as a geologist and a science educator, I am a geology instructor at a university (as well as a recovering high school Earth science teacher). My hope was that a book focused on thinking about time might help me improve how I schedule it, or at least help me to better appreciate how I spend it. I read Marcia Bjornerud’s Timefulness: How Thinking like a Geologist Can Help Save the World on the stair machine, as I do all my books for pleasure-it is the only time I have to do such reading, thanks to my self-imposed super busy schedule.
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