148 The Holocene 13 (2003)
the coverage of rivers restricted to water composition, sediments and river
management, but with little on  uvial erosion. The description of glacial
landforms is strongly in uenced by the subglacial sheet ood hypothesis,
a concept that is not accepted by all geomorphologists. The account of
glacial sediments is brief and some process explanations are misleading,
although the section on glaciotectonics is excellent. Dating is also only
brie y covered, with no details on recently evolving dating techniques of
particular relevance to Quaternary scientists.
These disappointments are, however, minor when set against the wealth
of information in this book. It will, no doubt, prove an invaluable reference
to university researchers, teachers and students. Equally, schoolteachers,
pupils and the educated layman will Ž nd clear and succinct explanation
of the huge diversity of processes that operate within and upon our planet.
The editors are to be congratulated for compiling what is truly a Com-
panion to the Earth, and one that will serve the scientiŽ c community for
many years to come.
Charles Harris
(Cardiff University)
The evolution of plants
K.J. Willis and J.C. McElwain, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002,
378 pp., £22.99, paperback. ISBN 0-19-850065-3
A Spanish philosopher, Fernando Savater, once remarked: ‘if you don’t want
to get wet, you shouldn’t swim’. In this sense, we should congratulate K.J.
Willis and J.C. McElwain because in The evolution of plants they have not
only ‘got wet’ but have done so by throwing themselves in at the deep end!
The book follows a chronological rather than a taxonomic order. The Ž rst
chapter (‘The evolutionary record and methods of reconstruction’) summar-
izes the techniques of evolutionary reconstruction, including dating methods.
The second chapter (‘Earliest forms of plant life’) describes the Precambrian
record and the origin of eukaryotic cells by endosymbiosis, and the impli-
cations of this process in the basal phylogeny of photosynthesizers. Tentative
links are implied between these early events of organic evolution and times
of major climatic and environmental changes, such as times of glaciation and
of increasing atmospheric O2.
Chapters 3 to 6 are devoted to what are considered the four principal
events of plant evolution, namely the colonization of land, the Ž rst forests,
the emergence of seed plants and the origins of  owering plants. I wel-
come the dispassionate tone with which the origin of angiosperms, Dar-
win’s ‘abominable mystery’, is discussed, and commend the ability of
Willis and McElwain to maintain their distance from molecular phylogen-
etics. However, given their customary ‘replacement rates’, the cladograms
chosen by the authors might well become obsolete during the lifetime of
this edition.
Chapter 7 (‘The last 65 million years’) describes the principal evolution-
ary events that have taken place during the Cenozoic, with sections dedi-
cated to the radiation of grasses, the Neogene expansion of steppe forma-
tions and the evolution of plants using the C4 and CAM photosynthetic
pathways. Plant physiologists will surely Ž nd thought-provoking the
speculation about future effects of high CO2 levels plus global warming
on the ranges of both photosynthetic groups. Willis and McElwain suggest
that C3 plants might contract their range during drought due to competition
from C4 plants. Chapter 8 deals with the potential of ancient DNA and
other biomolecules in evolutionary research, another topic of controversy.
The Ž nal chapter (‘Evolutionary theories and the plant fossil record’)
is simply magniŽ cent. It is here that we fully realize the importance and
originality of Willis’s and McElwain’s work and where the book reveals
itself to be much more than a bringing up to date of phylogenetic hypoth-
eses and the evolutionary reconstruction of plants. This chapter contains
the main conclusions of the book, namely that: (i) the evidence from the
fossil record indicates a broadening spectrum of diversity and morphologi-
cal complexity through time, while major evolutionary change was con-
centrated into short intervals in geological time followed by long intervals
of relatively little innovation; (ii) the macroevolutionary timescale of
plants shows the mass extinction events seen in the faunal record during
at least four of the ‘big Ž ve’ extinction events; and (iii) there is a close
chronological relationship between the major evolutionary changes in the
plant-fossil record and pulses of global plate-spreading and increased tec-
tonic activity. In this, Willis and McElwain suggest that various physical
or climatic parameters associated with these tectonic pulses may provide
the answer to what drives plant evolution. In particular, they propose that
pulses of increased atmospheric CO2 might well have been crucial to plant
evolution, representing a global extrinsic abiotic stress from which plants
could not escape.
Willis’s and McElwain’s book will appeal to a wide spectrum of
researchers, teachers and students with interests ranging from biogeogra-
phy to geology, through botany, ecology and plant physiology. The authors
have undertaken a praiseworthy task of interpretation and synthesis. They
have chosen their sources wisely and use botanical jargon sparingly. The
book is nicely illustrated, while the drawings are simply accompanied by
the relevant information, which helps easy understanding. I recommend
the use of the companion web site (www.oup.com/uk/plantevol), which
contains biome maps in full colour and provides additional support for
both the student and the lecturer.
The authors are convincing in their arguments and are sceptical in many
respects. Anyone with teaching experience knows that students must
understand how science really works by means of the genesis and dis-
covery of paradigms. Scepticism seems to be a healthy approach to the
organic complexity we face: in fact, it is the only approach that can
guarantee real progress in our understanding of the steps and processes
involved in plant evolution.
The evolution of plants is a book about evolution with a good balance
between data and concepts, palaeobiologically orientated, and no doubt
representing the logical outcome of the authors’ research trajectories. That
personal preferences or inclinations should not play a role in modern
science is a view to be rejected. Our ways of looking at problems are
strongly in uenced by social preconceptions and our way of thinking
(which almost by deŽ nition is biased one way or another). Scientists are
no exception and their intellectual and scientiŽ c baggage is equally tainted.
Science is as personal as art.
José S. Carrión
(University of Murcia, Spain)
Late Victorian holocausts: El Niño famines and the making of the
Third World
Mike Davis, London: Verso, 2001, 460 pp., £20, hardback. ISBN 1-85984-
739-0
Late Victorian holocausts is a detailed and painstaking exploration of the way
in which the widespread climate anomalies arising from a series of intense
El Niños in the late nineteenth century interacted with colonial interests to
produce devastating famines in Asia, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa,
in which up to 60 million people are estimated to have died.
The book is divided into four parts. In the Ž rst two, Mike Davis debunks
traditional accounts of the famines as a consequence of drought, exacer-
bated by overpopulation and ‘backward’ social structures. In a series of
chapters, Davis shows how British political and economic needs at home
produced a racist-economic ideology abroad, which translated into
inadequate and misguided (or, as Davis proposes, genocidal) famine relief
in the colonies, most especially India.
Part 3 describes the research efforts that have fed our current under-
standing of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation phenomenon and its telecon-
nections. While this section is interesting reading and rounds off the book
as a whole, it will be familiar territory for most climate scientists and
historians.
The book concludes with case studies from Brazil, China and India,
where the effects of El Niños were particularly severe. Davis’s analysis
is both political and, one suspects, ideological, concentrating on the socio-
economic and political structures and processes that enhanced vulner-
ability in these areas. The blame for these famines is laid Ž rmly at the
door of colonialists, who were ‘El Niño’s murderous accomplices’ in ‘the
golden age of Liberal Capitalism’.
Late Victorian holocausts is a book for readers with an interest in
historical climatology and its interactions with society; for those with
narrower interests in climate science, it is probably best avoided. The
reporting of Ž rst-hand accounts of the famines makes for fascinating read-
ing, but it is easy to get bogged down in the detail. I leave it to the
reader to decide whether these nineteenth-century famines were indeed
‘holocausts’, planned and executed by people who subscribed to the
‘sacred principles of Smith, Bentham and Mill’.
Mark New
(University of Oxford)