Books and CDs
Kent C. Condie, Professor of Geochemistry

Condie, K.C., 1976.  Plate Tectonics and Crustal Evolution.  First Edition, Pergamon Press, Elmsford, N.Y., 289 p.

Condie, K.C., 1981.  Archean Greenstone Belts.  Elsevier Publishing Co., Amsterdam, 434 p.

Condie, K.C., 1982.  Plate Tectonics and Crustal Evolution.  Second Edition, Pergamon Press, Elmsford, N.Y., 310 p.

Condie, K.C., 1989.  Plate Tectonics and Crustal Evolution.  Third Edition, Pergamon Press, Elmsford, N.Y., 476 p..

Condie, K.C.  (Editor), 1992.  Proterozoic Crustal Evolution.  Elsevier Publishing Co., Amsterdam, 537 p.

Condie, K. C.  (Editor), 1994.  Archean Crustal Evolution.  Elsevier, Publishing Co., Amsterdam,  528 p.

Condie, K.C., 1997.  Plate Tectonics and Crustal Evolution. Fourth Edition, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, UK, 282 p.

Condie, K.C., 1997.  Plate Tectonics and How the Earth Works.  Interactive CD ROM.  Tasa Graphic Arts, Inc., Taos, NM.

Condie, K.C. and Sloan, R. E., 1998.  Origin and Evolution of Earth:  Principles of Historical Geology.  Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 498 p.

Condie, K.C., 2001.  Mantle Plumes and Their Record in Earth History.  Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 305 p.
This book can be ordered from Amazon.com or Cambridge University Press (uk.cambridge.org). See also article by George Zamora.
Preface Excerpt
    Although plate tectonics and mantle plumes were introduced to geology at the same time in the 1960s and early 1970s by J. Tuzo Wilson and Jason Morgan, unlike plate tectonics, which rapidly collected supporters from the Earth Science community, mantle plumes took a back seat. It was not until the late 1980s that scientists turned some of their attention to mantle plumes, and indeed during the 1990s, when mantle plumes really "became of age," publications dealing with mantle plumes increased exponentially.
    I think three things brought mantle plumes to the forefront in the nineties. First is high speed computers, which allowed scientists to numerically model mantle processes in reasonable amounts of time with increased accuracy. Second, exciting new data from the exploration of Mars and Venus suggested mantle plumes and not plate tectonics were important on these planets. The detailed mapping of the surfaces of both Mars and Venus by the Pathfinder and Magellan Missions returned superb images of the planetary surfaces, which showed gigantic volcanoes, rifts, and domal uplifts, none of which looked like the product of plate tectonics. Geophysical models suggested that many of these features could be produced by mantle plumes, and in some instances, gigantic mantle plumes. If mantle plumes were important on Mars and Venus, why not on Earth? And third, in the late 1990s, the increased precision of seismic tomography allowed scientists for the first time to begin mapping the Earth's mantle. Truly spectacular color figures began to appear in Nature and Science, almost on a weekly basis, showing what some geoscientists had said all along:  the mantle is really quite inhomogeneous and descending slabs probably go all the way to the core-mantle interface. Mantle plumes such as Hawaii and Iceland really do have very deep roots.
    Why did I write a book on mantle plumes? Now seemed a good time to bring together under one cover a summary of the truly enormous amount of data that have been published, principally during the 1990s, related to mantle plumes and their role in Earth history. Not only results for modern mantle plumes, but also for mantle plumes in the geologic past. Could the Earth have been more like Mars and Venus during the Archean some 3 Ga? Instead of cooling principally by plate tectonics as it does today, did the Archean Earth cool chiefly by rising mantle plumes? How do we identify the effects of mantle plumes in the geologic record? Did plumes have a role in the growth of continents? Are large mantle plume events recorded in the geologic record, and if so, what were the consequences of these events in terms our atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere?
© Copyright Cambridge University Press 2001

Condie, K.C. 2004. Earth as an Evolving Planetary System. Elsevier Press, 350 pp., ISBN: 0-12-088392-9
Earth as an Evolving Planetary System presents the key topics and questions relating to the evolution of the Earth's crust and mantle over the last four billion years. It examines the role of plate tectonics in the geological past via geological evidence and proposed plate reconstruction. Kent Condie synthesizes data from the fields of oceanography, geophysics, planetology, and geochemistry to examine the key topics and questions relating to the evolution of the Earth's crust and mantle. This volume provides a substantial update to Condie's established text, Plate Tectonics and Crustal Evolution, 4E. It emphasizes the interactive nature of various components of the Earth system on time scales of tens to hundreds of millions of years, and how these interactions have affected the history of the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere.

Benn, K., Mareschal, J-C. and Condie, K. C., 2006. Archean Geodynamics and Environments. American Geophysical Union, Geophysical Monograph 164, 320 pp.
    The Archean Eon, which represents nearly one-third of Earth's distant past, embraces the formation and recycling of the first lithosphere and the emergence, growth, and erosion of the continents. It is to the Archean that we now look to better understand the processes that shaped the planet as we know it. -- from the Preface
   Archean Geodynamics and Environments presents significant aspects of Archean geodynamics in 17 benchmark papers for the experienced specialist and initiate. Using data from the preserved Archean geological record and cutting-edge geodynamic and geophysical modeling, the book features discussion on:

• Global geodynamics and plate tectonics: the Archean thermal regime and the nature of mantle convection
• Thermomechanical evolution of continents
• Subduction, accretion, and orogeny
• Early environments and the evolution of life

Earth scientists, researchers, and their students -- those who study the origins of our planet from the perspectives of tectonophysics, seismology, volcanology, geochemistry, petrology and more -- will find this work a compelling resource in defining current views, prevailing questions, and future research needs.