The world around us is made up of an extraordinary range of constantly changing landscape. Using an innovative visual approach, "Earth" provides a perspective on our planet's apparently infinite range of natural features and the system of interlinking forces that formed and continue to change them. At the core of the book is a series of visual catalogues of more than 400 of the most impressive, beautiful, or unusual places on Earth - from the Colorado River to the Atacama Desert, from the rainforets of Indonesia to the Antarctic Ice-sheet. These inspiring inventories of real phenomena are combined with explanations of the processes that have shaped our planet over its 4.6 billion years of turbulent history.
Douglas Palmer is a science writer, academic, and author of many books on paleontology, including Life Before Man and Graptolites: Writing in the Rock. In addition to writing numerous articles for leading journals such as Science and New Scientist, he teaches Natural and Earth Sciences at Cambridge University, England.