Powell breaks new ground. His scholarship is deep, and his stories are well-written and enriched with human detail. Anyone with an interest in how science progresses will profit from reading this. -- Spencer Weart, Director Emeritus of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics Absorbing Publishers Weekly 6/23/14 This clear and well-written book offers four classic examples that show how science progresses - despite tough opposition, generally accepted ideas are often slowly replaced by newer, better ones. As an apocryphal medical school dean told incoming students: "Half of what we will teach you in the next four years is wrong. The problem is that we don't knowwhich half." James Lawrence Powell's new title provides a lively look at how the sciences, in this case the Geosciences, really work. -- Seth Stein, Northwestern University