Mars: A Cosmic Stepping Stone - Uncovering Humanity's Cosmic Context Author: Kevin Nolan Publisher: Springer ISBN: 978-0-387-34164-4 Price: $27.50 (Hb), 379pp
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First impressions: if you want a digestible compendium of state-of-the-art Mars research, this is the book. However I feel poor editing detracts from an otherwise extremely accessible
volume in the 'new Mars' library. The author, based in Ireland, has an impressive space education background. There are always things to learn from any new book, as here: I didn't know that nineteenth century astronomer Schiaparelli was
colour-blind, for example.

One definition of history is anything that happened longer than five years ago. Kevin Nolan has set out his book roughly along these lines, with the 'meat' obviously the Mars Express and Spirit and Opportunity rover findings since 2004. That year marked Europe's probe entering orbit and the landing of both (ongoing) NASA vehicles. Later, more US missions followed and even the Phoenix polar lander's early results are mentioned.

There is an excellent selection of illustrations, although I feel perhaps a larger Mars map would help locate places mentioned throughout the text. The book covers some topics not addressed in detail by other recent Mars publications. There's reflection on the philosophy and ethics of planetary protection - with a nice explanation of the differing types of protection level required - and the author compares and contrasts ESA's
Aurora and NASA's Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) plans.

My main criticism of this book was its grammar and style. Something that continued to mildly irritate throughout was the constant splitting of infinitives! Not everyone accepts this trend in modern English, but once noticed, I found myself searching for and finding many. More generally, I'm not sure the checking of proofs was good in places, with noticeable errors slipping through; once conscious of these, you tend to seek others.

When discussing Martian mapping I think the author has become confused between topology (the study of networks) and topography (the study of surfaces) and I am surprised this wasn't picked up during editing. Also I cannot understand the author's use of the term 'enigmatic' when describing various spacecraft science instruments. Am I being a pedant? You be the judge, dear reader as the science content is excellent - and
bang up to date - even if the English isn't to my liking at times.

Malcolm Smith