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Some Reviews - Part 4 of 4

M!, November 1999, Vol. 5, No. 4, p.41:

Meteorites and Their Parent Planets

by Harry Y. Mc.Sween, Jr, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, Second Edition, 1999, 310 pages.
ISBN:0-521-58751-4, paperback.

Harry McSween has revised his highly popular Meteorites and Their Parent
Planets and the result is an even better account of this rapidly growing
field of science. This second edition, published 12 years after the
first, comes on the heels of many major discoveries in meteoritics and
planetary science. Some of the new information included in the revised
edition are data from spacecraft flybys of asteroids, Hubble Space
Telescope images of 4 Vesta, calculations on the orbital migration of
meteorites from the asteroid belt to Earth, and a balanced treatment of
the proposed relict nanofossils in martian meteorite ALH84001 (McSween
has been a vocal opponent of the claim this meteorite shows evidence for
martian life).
The opening chapter introduces meteorites and briefly describes
meteorite fall phenomena including historical accounts, concentrating
meteorites in the Antarctic, and the science of large impacts. McSween
follows a similar format to the first edition by devoting separate
chapters to the chondrites, achondrites, and iron and stony-iron
meteorites, each of which is followed by a chapter describing the parent
bodies of these meteorites. Chapter 8 is devoted to showing how
meteorites actually make the journey to Earth from their respective
parent bodies. Chapter 9 is new to this edition and is entitled, "The
Importance of Meteorites: Some Examples." This final chapter is a
wonderful addition since many popular books on meteorites do not convey
to the public how much information has been gained about our solar
system through study of these rocks falling from the sky. The end of the
book includes an appendix on minerals and a glossary covering
meteoritics jargon.
To be certain, this book is about the science of meteorites. There is
relatively little on the history of meteoritics and almost nothing on
the hobby of meteorite collecting. The focus is on the laboratory
analysis of these space rocks and what they can tell us about our
celestial neighborhood. The result is a splendid book by one of the
world's leading meteorite authorities.
McSween does a remarkable job making this highly technical and varied
subject sound so simple. For example, the chapter on achondrites begins
with an excellent discussion on core-mantle formation that includes
magma dynamics, fractional crystallization, and cumulates. This is
followed by a geochemistry lesson on how fractional crystallization can
effect rare-earth element trends and oxygen isotopes. All of this
background information is then applied directly to the achondrites (and
later to the iron meteorites) to help deduce the structure and nature of
the parent bodies for these meteorites.
The second edition of Meteorites and Their Parent Planets has been
expanded by nearly 80 pages and every figure has been updated and
improved giving the book a sleek and more contemporary design. The
strength of this book is the wealth of knowledge that McSween presents
in a format that can be easily grasped by anyone. I can strongly
recommend this book for anyone interested in what meteorites are or
where they come from.

Glen Akridge
Cosmochemistry Group
University of Arkansas


Sincerely,

Bernd

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