Planet Earth and Earth systems - Physical Processes in Earth and Environmental Sciences - page 17

Garden (Addison Wesley, 1996). Aspects of Earth's
history and Earth's position in the Universe is told by
C. Allègre's From Stone to Star (Harvard, 1992), and,
engagingly for the very beginner, in B. Bryson's A Short
History of nearly Everything (Doubleday/Black Swan,
2003). Pioneering efforts to date the Earth are beautifully
set out in C. Lewis' biography of Arthur Holmes,
The Dating Game (Cambridge, 2000). Chaos theory is

stimulatingly told by I. Stewart in Does God Play Dice?
(Penguin, 1989). The tectonic-free parable of Gaia is told
by its inventor, J. Lovelock, in Gaia (Oxford, 1979) while
P. Westbroek adds a geological perspective in Life as a
Geological Force (Norton, 1992). The history and origins
of oxygen are told in N. Lane's Oxygen (Oxford, 2002).
Information on Nilometers and other aspects of ancient
measurement are at www.waterhistory.org.