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’s Adventures in Wonderland. It starts at the beginning and goes on to the end and then stops. It’s 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’s magnetic field, the formation of the Earth’s crust and plate tectonics.…
