Book excerpt: Historical geology courses require clear, practical examinations of pertinent concepts and procedures. The authors of Interpreting Earth History provide full-color, stand-alone exercises that identify and augment the critical features that make the identification of geologic formations possible. The Ninth Edition continues a legacy of exceptional coverage, providing the flexibility and scope necessary to engage students with geological data from a variety of sources and scales to explain geological patterns. Students will become more proficient in their ability to see and recognize geological patterns as well as the compositional and textural attributes of rocks and fossils. This classroom-tested laboratory manual has been updated and now includes an exercise that addresses the concept of climate change from the perspective of deep time.