How to catalog the earth? Luhr and fellow staff members at the Smithsonian Institution have put together an encyclopedic, picture-rich, beautifully designed compendium that draws on up-to-date research in numerous fields to tell the incredible story of our planet's birth, place in the cosmos, and evolution, noting all the primary characteristics that make this flourishing blue green planet unique within the solar system. The writing is clear, animated, and engrossing. The page layouts are works of graphic art: loaded with complex visual and textual information, they are nonetheless airy, balanced, and inviting. A grand time line beginning with the big bang and moving through the full spectrum of geological eras serves as an overture to the detailed story of the earth's dramatic coalescence into the world we know. Detailed looks at rocks and minerals segue into multifaceted coverage of the atmosphere, tectonic plates, glaciers, earthquakes, volcanoes, deserts, grasslands, rivers, forests, mountains, oceans and seas, as well as the topography of civilization. This superb and stunning volume should be kept handy along with atlases and dictionaries. Donna Seaman