(7 chapters) and the second how life responded to these climatic changes (4 ... given to the figures: some contain incomplete captions, are cropped too short.
The Great Ice Age
R. C. L. Wilson, S. A. Drury and J. L. Chapman 2000, Routledge, The Open University, London and New York, 267 pp, £ 19.99, ISBN: 0-415-19842-9. In deciding to write this textbook, the three authors, R. C. L. Wilson, S. A. Drury and J. L. Chapman, made three initial decisions: first to write on Quaternary climatic change despite their nonspecialisation in the topic, secondly to avoid references in the text and lastly to achieve a low final cost. This textbook is aimed to serve as the base for an Open University course (an English university using distance learning rather than teaching in a classroom) on “Earth and Life”. It therefore is targeted at mostly UK students. The book is structured in two main parts, the first covers the history of climatic change since 2.6 Ma (7 chapters) and the second how life responded to these climatic changes (4 chapters). As presented on the book cover, much of part 1 is a detective story, discussing the clues that palaeoclimatologists use to reconstruct past changes. The final chapter of this part outlines a number of explanations for climatic changes, none of which, as recognised by the authors, adequately explains all the evidence documented in earlier chapters. In part 2, some of the biological effects of the climatic upheaval described in part 1 are examined, focusing both on human anatomy and the way in which conscious social behaviour responded to these rapidly changing selection pressures. These two parts represent an excellent mixture of information drawn from Earth and Life Sciences emphasising the need of a joint approach for the search of causes and effects of climatic change. The flow of the reasoning is very easy to follow.The language is straightforward and narrative. My level of interest remained high throughout the reading as the writers have obviously managed to gather an abundance of up-to-date information based most likely on extensive reading. Chapters 9 and 10 on Humans are humorous. The authors have not hesitated to include some hilarious photos. Numerous and very pedagogic black and white figures, including drawings, maps and photographs, illustrate the book. The authors have made use of explanation boxes, original citations, chapter summaries, questions and answers. Although I recognised that the use of boxes is a trend in recent textbooks, it has the inconvenient effect of interrupting the fluidity of the main text. The reader sometimes has to go up to four pages further to resume her/his reading (pages 19 to 23). References (sometimes only one !) are given at the end of each chapter. They encompass mostly review articles and books and are each followed by a few words about their content. Often, as a piece of information was raising my interest, I regretted I could not identify the source article ! Although the book is for UK students, the wide geographical coverage for the examples should be suitable even for colleagues from the southern hemisphere. “Eurocentricity” seems to have been avoided, although I am biased. One can only regret that, despite the nearly complete absence of typographic errors in the text, the same care has not been given to the figures: some contain incomplete captions, are cropped too short or have symbols without explanations. In conclusion, despite some criticisms, which I hope remain slight, I would strongly recommend it to all Quaternary students for their study and also to any lay person wishing to increase his/her knowledge avoiding arid facts and brain-twisting reading. Suzanne Leroy, Brunel University (West London)
