Customer Reviews

Meteorites and their Parent Planets

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I'm a geologist who loves to find good summaries of geology / planetary science topics, and "Meteorites and their Parent Planets" is one of the best I've found. While I've always been more interested in "geometric" topics like structural geology, McSween's book made geochemistry and cosmochemistry come alive like I'd never imagined. He weaves a fascinating tale of the amazing deductions that have been made from analyses of meteorites. "Compositional" sciences like petrology and geochemistry used to make my eyes glaze over, but now I think that if I had it to do over again, I might go into geochemistry or meteoritics! I look forward to reading McSween's other books.

Meteorites are amazing. Most people don't realize how much of what we know about the earth and solar system is based on the study of meteorites. McSween is a scientist and this book is technical but is well written and understandable to a layman with a reasonable scientific background. He covers topics from the earliest history of recorded meteorite falls to the chemistry of these objects. With the exception of martian microbes and armegeddon, meteoritics is largely ignored by the lay press. This book weaves tales of ancient asteroid impacts and planets long ago destroyed. The progression of the book is logical, and along the way, the author stops to explain how tests such as spectrophotometry and radioactive dating work. If you're the type who wants to know "how did they figure that out?" this book is for you.

I both collect meteorites and give talks about them throughout the U.S. I am always looking for good books on meteorites that I can recommend to those who attend my presentations. Norton's books, as well as McSween's, are the best. It's chock full of very interesting information that has been abstracted from research journals and put into language that non-specialists can understand. It's by no means a beginners book, but one that you'd want to read after the more superficial ones.

The main theme is, of course, identifying the parent planets and asteroids for the classifications of meteorite. McSween provides his readers with the most up-to-date information, by 1999 standards, and when there is no agreement, he offers us his best opinion.

The book is organized by first providing a good overview of meteoronics in general. Then he addresses chondrites in Chapter 2, followed by a chapter related to possible parent bodies for the chondrites discussed. Ch 4 and 5 do the same for achondrites, and Chs 6 and 7 for Irons and Stony-Irons. The final two chapters get into subjects such as the geography of teh asteroidal belt and Kirkwood gaps, resonance, fractionations, and so forth -- this is the discussion that will interest those who have been involved with meteors for awhile.

I highly recommend the book and hope that he updates it in the near future. It has a 1999 date -- 8 years ago from this review. I'd love to read a third edition.

I think that this book is very well written and easy for the beginner to understand. Lots of great information.

Really a MUST-have for the serious meteorite collector. Lots of scientifical informations, but very readable.

As a meteorite dealer, I highly recommend this book for collectors to expand their knowledge.

Informative reading and great photos. This book makes a great addition to your meteorite book library.