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Citizen of the World: Life and Times of an Irreverent Scientist
Paperback
Biographies GeneralTravel GeneralGeneral Science
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Publisher: John Rietman
Published: Jul 15 2026
Pages: 670
Weight: 1.94
Height: 1.48 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
From an Indiana farm boyhood to uranium surveys in the American West, offshore seismic vessels, Arctic ice, African beaches, Southeast Asian pipeline landfalls, and the long strange business of building a life, Citizen of the World is the memoir of a geologist who kept saying yes to the next improbable assignment.
John Rietman's work carried him through deserts, mountains, oilfields, oceans, foreign ports, survey boats, bad roads, worse weather, and equipment that usually failed at the least convenient moment. Along the way he met rugby players, field crews, sailors, engineers, fishermen, welders, bureaucrats, hustlers, village headmen, and more than a few people who seemed designed specifically to test his patience.
But this is not only a story of travel and work. It is also a story of family, marriage, fatherhood, loss, reinvention, and the complicated pull between adventure and home. With dry humor and a geologist's eye for detail, Rietman writes about the absurdity of field life, the beauty of wild places, the kindness of strangers, the limits of competence, and the quiet voice of the natural world that followed him from childhood into old age.
Part adventure memoir, part working-life chronicle, and part reflection on what it means to belong nowhere and everywhere, Citizen of the World is a candid, funny, and deeply human account of a life lived across borders, oceans, and several questionable decisions.
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