The Little Book of Planet Earth by Rolf Meissner, Copernicus, $20, ISBN 0387952586
THIS is a book founded on the advice of the King in Alice鈥檚 Adventures in Wonderland. It starts at the beginning and goes on to the end and then stops. It鈥檚 a simple plan and excellently carried out, exploring early ideas about the origin of the Earth, then describing the Solar System and gradually narrowing the focus until reaching the core of the Earth itself. Meissner then retraces his path with fascinating explanations, for example, of the Earth鈥檚 magnetic field, the formation of the Earth鈥檚 crust and plate tectonics.
It is a vast scope for a paperback-sized book of 200 pages, but Meissner never gets out of breath and never stoops to didacticism so the reading is as easy as summertime. There are admirable illustrations, too. As an up-to-date text book for schools, if they could afford it, it would be a knockout.
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The translation of The Little Book of Planet Earth from the original German is occasionally mysterious. For example 鈥淸Jupiter鈥檚] immense gravitational force attracts them and disturbs their orbits, tearing them outside鈥�, and a glossary would have been valuable. Otherwise the book is a small miracle.