160 pages
Published 2020
Read November 29
Rating: 3 out of 5
This is a coffee table book comprising photographs of plant fossils, each with a page or two of descriptive text linking it to some wider topic in botany, evolutionary history, and ecology. Make no mistake: I read this to inflate my book numbers. With a month left in the year, I’m pushing myself to read 150 books in 2023. Maybe even 153, which would break my adult record for most books in one year. (My all-time record, 183, which I hit as a teen in 1996 or 1997, is well beyond my present attention span.)
All that aside, this is a perfectly unremarkable introductory text for the reader who might be curious enough to visit a museum and actually read the placards, but hasn’t had a science class since high school. To illustrate the level of information in this book, the introduction begins: “It’s not easy being a plant.” It’s no Otherlands, but then again, it never set out to be.
The photographs, of course, are the main attraction. They’re frequently stunning, as fossils so regularly are. And this is a whole book of them. Can’t go wrong with that.
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