Before Best, many petrology textbooks were either purely descriptive (looking at rocks under a microscope) or purely mathematical (thermodynamics). Best realized that to truly understand a rock, you needed to bridge that gap. He wrote the book to treat rocks as that tell a story of pressure, temperature, and time. 2. The Global Scope
Here is the story of why this book became a legend in the world of geology: 1. The Visionary Approach
The second edition of is widely considered the "gold standard" for anyone trying to understand the Earth's crust and mantle.