Paleontology, an illustrated history

Paleontology, an illustrated history - David Bainbridge ***

I really wanted to like David Bainbridge's illustrated palaeontology book more than I did in practice. One of the few criticisms I had of Henry Gee's impressive A Very Short History of Life on Earth was its lack of illustrations. Here the illustrations are centre stage. In fact they've taken over the whole show. Much of Bainbridge's text is interesting, but I found the book almost impossible to read as practically every other time I turned a page, the flow of the writing was broken by large captions for illustrations, which felt like they were part of the main text but weren't. Rather than link the illustrations to the main text, many of them were almost standalone spreads. As a result, the design simply doesn't work very well.

That's a shame, because the text I did manage to read took an interesting course of breaking the chronologically based chapters into sections devoted to specific palaeontologists, from Smith, Anning and Darwin to Clack and Khudi. (The final chapter deviates a little from this format as there is also a section on the movie versions of King Kong and Jurassic Park, which is entertaining, if not exactly fitting with the rest.) The illustrations have a good range, but the artily subdued tones they are printed in tend to reduce the impact - this would have been better going the full Technicolor.

I suspect the structure will make this a difficult book to stick with for someone who hasn't already read a bit on the subject. As a result, I think it works best to fill in illustrated details on people and discoveries the reader has already encountered elsewhere. Not a disaster by any means, but it wouldn't have taken much to have made it significantly better.

Hardback:

Kindle:
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee or taking out a membership:
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Comments

Mathematics with Love – Mary Stopes-Roe *****

Admittedly it’s early days (this review is written in January), but this, for me, is the surprise hit of the year so far! I approached this book with trepidation, but found it absolutely delightful. It is described on the cover as the “courtship correspondence of Barnes Wallis, inventor of the bouncing bomb”, and contains a series of letters between Wallis and his cousin and eventual wife Molly Bloxham, along with some useful annotation by their daughter, Mary. The courtship itself is not without difficulties, as Wallis was 18 years older than the 17-year-old Molly at the start of the correspondence, and her father, not surprisingly, wasn’t too pleased about the interest of such an elderly suitor, but that isn’t the only reason the letters are interesting – it’s also because of maths, and Wallis’s position in the UK as the engineering hero of the Second World War. (Incidentally, it seemed very strange to see letters addressed to “Barnes” – I had always assumed Barnes Wallis was a ...

Data Empire - Roopika Risam ****

The central thesis presented by Roopika Risam is that information gives us (and particularly countries) the power to organise, control and dominate others. Although I have a couple of issues with the presentation, this is a genuinely interesting trip through the history of our use of stored information from the earliest tallies to the latest information technology. I loved a quote from Lisa Gitelman that data is is always 'cooked' so 'raw data is an oxymoron'. This neatly underlines Risam's thesis that data and information are not neutral facts, but rather tools that (like everything from fire to electronics) can be used for good or evil. As we are taken through the historical context, it can sometimes be a little difficult to judge whether Risam regards a particular example as bad or good, even when the outcome is disastrous. One thing I didn't like too much is the adherence to a popular science writing approach that has got distinctly hackneyed: opening chapte...

Andrew Jaffe - Five way interview

Andrew Jaffe is professor of astrophysics and cosmology at Imperial College, London and director of the Imperial Centre for Inference and Cosmology. His new book is The Random Universe. Why science? I’ve always been interested in science, in particular in astronomy, astrophysics, and space. One of my earliest memories - back in nursery school in New Jersey, I think - was watching one of the moon launches. I wanted that excitement to be part of my life! I never got to be an astronaut, but I did get to be part of the Planck Satellite team, and was privileged to be able to travel to the ESA Spaceport in French Guiana to watch the launch. In between, I was lucky enough to have a supportive family, get a good education, and find inspiring teachers, mentors, and collaborators. They helped me model the universe, and helped me learn how to refine those models in the face of experimental and observational evidence. That is, they taught me to be a scientist. Why this book? The Random...

Search This Blog