Stories in stone

Looking at the stone masonry, facades, and ornamentations of buildings, Williams sees a range of rocks equal to any assembled by plate tectonics.He discusses a three-and-a-half-billion-year-old rock called Morton gneiss that is the color of swirled pink-and-black taffy; a 1935 gas station made of petrified wood; and a fort in St. Augustine, Florida, that has withstood three hundred years of attacks and hurricanes, despite being made of a stone (coquina) that has the consistency of a granola bar, and others. From publisher description.