this subset explores the land masses and seas of the world. It describes mountain ranges, the oceans, continental movement, and a wide variety of features that have influenced life on earth. Detailed explorations of the evolution of dinosaurs, fish, birds, plant life and humans, as they were influenced by the earth's surface, fill this set. Fantastic disruptions, from Mount St. helens to the ice ages are woven into the story of how the earth influences everything.
Earth Science: Earth’s Surface & History is a concise resource covering a broad range of subcategories within the study of the earth and its history. This two-volume set provides a comprehensive overview of the breadth of earth’s long history and the many intertwined facets that create earth’s dynamic surface features. Organized in A–Z fashion, each essay details a topic and its relation to the study of the earth and its history and also defines related terms. The main body of each essay is an in-depth treatment of the topic, with organized, relevant subheadings highlighting major contextual areas within the topic. Each essay concludes with a bibliography that includes succinct annotations and a cross-reference list that directs readers to other related entries. Both volumes include a helpful categorical list of contents, sorting topics into major areas including but not limited to continents and continental processes, crustal and surface features, eruptions, geomorphology, paleontology, and the fossil record. At the end of volume 2 are multiple appendixes, including a glossary, a complete bibliography, and chart representations of earthquakes in history, a geological time scale, glacial retreat, and tectonic plates. The set concludes with a comprehensive index containing accurate cross-references, making the volumes easily accessible and navigable to users. Earth’s Surface & History is part of a four-series earth-science set from Salem Press (eight volumes total) and would be a beneficial addition to high-school and undergraduate libraries. It would be of value for both novices and more advanced users looking to supplement their knowledge on topics related to earth’s history and surface. Its focus lends itself to detailed and inclusive coverage of earth’s lengthy history and its progression through time, coverage that may be lacking in more general reference sources on earth science. --Janet Pinkley
