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If you think that the Great Plains are flat and uninspiring, this book will change that percept. Geographer Anthony Dzik presents some of the most awe-inspiring sedimentary landscapes of mid-continent North America. Here are the "canyonlands" of northwest Kansas, the rain pillars of Nebraska, the chalk pillars of the Cretaceous Sea, the Swiss cheese-like lumps of Montana's Medicine Rocks, the sparkling Gloss Mountains of Oklahoma, the "Grand Canyon of Texas", the badlands where Teddy Roosevelt rode the range, Hell's Half-Acre, and many other spectacular deviations from "flatness". In terminology familiar to professional natural scientists (but easily understood by laypersons) , Dzik deftly describes the geologic, climatic, and biogeographic processes that fashioned the horizontal sedimentary strata into weird and wondrous landscapes.