Customer Reviews

Amazon Expeditions: My Quest for the Ice-Age Equator

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I enjoy reading books by scientists who can write well and who talk about how they do their research. But I'm not just interested in the highlights and awards and accolades they've received - I like to read about the nitty gritty details of how a particular brand of science is done - whether it's in the field or in the lab (or both, as in this case), the logistical problems of field work in far flung locations, how sometimes a whole year of work ends up as a dead end.

Paul Colinvaux's book gives all that in a setting of field work in the Galapagos and the Amazon. I like how he makes the topic of researching the ancient climate of the Amazon like a mystery to be slowly worked out over several decades of work. I never thought I'd be fascinated by how one cores lake sediments to get at their fossil pollen record, but Colinvaux did it for me.