Customer Reviews:
 Fascinating subject, brilliant book July 29, 2007
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
For me, this book reads as easily as a good novel, and I refer to it before any 'day out' in Scotland, so I know what I'll be looking at. The text is straightforward, the diagrams are informative and the photographs are superb. Congratulations to all concerned in the book's production, and thank you for adding another dimension to my view of my country.
Beautiful coffee table book July 28, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
What a wonderful, well wirtten and illustrated book. I found it very interesting and easy to read. The photographs are beautiful and i enjoyed the layout and format very much. A present which I was very happy to recieve!
Review from Scotsman newspaper July 28, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
FIRST with the news, albeit after 20,000 years, it was this paper that in 1840 broke the story of the Ice Age; the astronomer royal, Dr Neville Maskelyne, had already used Schiehallion to calculate Earth's mass. It's easily overlooked, but the modern science of geology has been one of the most important legacies of the Scottish Enlightenment. That story is just a subplot in a book which sets out to explain how the country we know as Scotland came to be, over untold millions of years, but it lends a special resonance to a stupendous subject. This small land is built on enormous geological complexity: it seems fitting that it should have been in at the start of the systematic study of Earth's formation. Big and beautifully illustrated, this book is rigorous yet lucid, and written with patriotic pride - a work of more than scientific importance.
 Disappointing June 25, 2007
8 out of 12 found this review helpful
A new well-illustrated book on the geology and landforms of Scotland is welcome in a field where most available literature is either highly technical or long out of date and often difficult to get hold of.
This new work despite, or perhaps because of the support of Scottish Natural Heritage, is well and copiously illustrated but otherwise very disappointing. The text is not well written, often unclear and difficult to follow. Many of the diagrams are clearly lifted from elsewhere and poorly labelled. The structure of the book is confusing and it suffers from the three authors not having pulled their work into a coherent whole. The endorsement but some unknown but pretty girl is a clear warning of the dumbing-down of the subject matter within. On the other hand, it is fairly cheap and has lots of lovely pictures.
In short; "people who bought this book" would do much better with Malcolm Rider's excellent Hutton's Arse, which deals with the same subject matter but in a lucid often amusing manner and uses (and clarifies) often quite complex science in a way which genuinely enhances understanding of Scotland's wonderful scenery and the complex geological story that underlies it.
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