Geology: an illustrated history - David Bainbridge ***

Of all the sciences it's arguable that geology is the hardest to make appealing to the general public. Okay some rocks are pretty, and it's behind impressive landscapes, but it lacks a certain excitement for most. By presenting geology in a highly illustrated form (and stretching its definitions to the limits) David Bainbridge gives it an attractive edge in a coffee table fashion.

The book is divided into five sections: Time, Energy, Process, Use and Life, which gives a feel for the way that Bainbridge expands the content beyond what most of us would think of as pure geology. Apart from introductory text and insert spreads like 'Insights: Periodic Table', the bulk of each section is a series of often impressive images, each with a longish caption. To show just how far Bainbridge takes us from the conventional, the Time chapter, which covers the way geology has changed our view of Earth time, starts its images with four artworks, including a creation image in the 12th century Aberdeen Bestiary, and da Vinci's Madonna of the Rocks. Arguably the connection to the theme is a touch tenuous here, though we do then get onto rather a lot of images of landscapes and strata.

Perhaps the most surprising sections are the last two. Use takes us into the ways we have employed minerals and stone extracted from the Earth, including fossil fuels (with the suitably green if meaningless to the untutored eye 'Illustration from "Assessing the carbon sequestration potential of basalt using X-ray micro-CT and rock mechanics"'). Life argues, perhaps fairly, that palaeontology is so deeply intwined with geology that it belongs in a book like this, giving us the inevitable stream of images of fossils, and rather less expected images of Europa and Enceladus, suggesting their sub-ice oceans are somehow part of geology. (Surely it shouldn't be 'geo'?) Interestingly, Bainbridge has already done a palaeontology version of this book, but I the geology title works better.

One problem I have with highly illustrated books is that they are structurally bitty. There's often no clear flow, and this came across particularly strongly here, where, for instance, the Use chapter can have on opposing pages the English market town of Shrewsbury and Michelangelo's sculpture Awakening Slave. Some may find this scattergun feeling entertaining, but for me it gets in the way of following a narrative.

This is a book with plenty going for it, I'm just not sure in what circumstances I would normally read it, if 'read' is even the right word. One to dip into, perhaps, rather than read cover to cover.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here