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Earth’s history, although exciting, is clearly not exciting enough. Robert Felix’s Not by Fire, but by Ice (Sugarhouse, $15.95, ISBN 0 9648746 9 5) livens it up considerably, adding dinosaurs fried by enormous electric currents, mammoths buried alive by monster snowstorms and tectonic plate movements driven by electrophoresis—all supposed consequences of palaeomagnetic reversals. It’s guaranteed to make any earth scientist giggle.