Reddit mentions of Historical Geology

One thing you might want to take a look at is an introductory historical geology textbook.

I read an older edition of this (http://www.amazon.com/Historical-Geology-Reed-Wicander/dp/1111987297) and it was generally pretty good. Very expensive there, but I'm sure a PDF is available for free with a bit of looking.

It covers the very basics of many fields (plate tectonics, Earth composition and structure, radiometric dating techniques) and then moves through major time periods of Earth's history, including dinosaurs and all sorts of other organisms.

You might find it somewhat unsatisfying in that it is covering such a vast amount of material that it can't go too in-depth proving its points every step of the way, but it does a pretty good job considering it's scope, and has lots of good photos of fossils and/or diagrams.

As a single book aimed at understanding Earth's history, I'm not sure you could do much better.

Try a historical geology class.
Here's a [historical geology textbook] (http://www.amazon.com/Historical-Geology-Reed-Wicander/dp/1111987297) used for several, and a freebie historical book, although this looks like a combination of Physical and Historical more than strictly historical.

Course slides with excellent diagrams for the basic principles of how rocks are deposited.

List of Internet resources for historical geology