The emerald planet: how plants changed Earth's history

This book was recommended by Steven Johnson in The Invention of Air. I was not as drawn into it as I'd expected to be, but part of the trouble is that I'd set myself a deadline. A chart maps each chapter onto the time frame it covers, and it's a handy thing that I kept marked for reference. I have not memorized the geologic eras. Each chapter begins with a paragraph summary, and covers a major issue, such as why were plants and animals so big 300 million years ago, or how did the polar forests of 150 million years ago cope with extreme durations of sunlight and darkness, supported by lots of detail about explorers and scientists who made progress in answering the question. A continuous theme is that understanding climate, and the show more contributions and reactions of plants to it, at any time in the past, helps with understanding how to model it in the present. This is all useful and interesting, and impressive even, to see how many people over how many decades are involved in chipping away at a problem, and yet... I found it to be rather tedious going -- too many names and dates and bits and pieces that detracted from essentials.

(read 29 May 2011) show less

Nicely written book that explores the changing physiology of plants and how this affects the climate in the past and possibly the future. I found this to be an extremely interesting book and learned a whole lot of new things which is the whole point to reading science books.

NOTE: Due to the large number of diagrams, it is probably better to read a print version of this book rather than an epub/mobi version since the diagrams are rather small on an e-reader.

Vignettes about plant life on the planet and how plants engineer the environment.