Review: Geosystems–An Introduction to Physical Geography (6th Edition)

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This is a World-Class Book and DVD for Serious People

June 30, 2007

Robert Christopherson

Edit of 5 Feb 08 to add emphasis comment and links.

Coment of 5 Feb 08: This amazing professional product has pride of place in my 3000 volum library. It is the permanet owner of the teacher's lecturn, always open to chapter. I include an image aboe to emphasize this point. This book and its author, are GOLD STANDARD.

This is the only DVD I watch weekly on background, stopping my work at each song. This is an incrediblly gifted rendition and integraration of reality art, technology, and directoriaq craft. Wow, wow, wow.

I picked this gem up at the University of Colorado bookstore. I do not have the time for a third graduate degree, but if I did, it would be in Environmental Science.

Unlike most textbooks, this hardcover version is worth every penny, and the paperback is a bargain. This is a large book, 8.5 x 11, crammed with photos, extraordinarily well organized, illustrated, and presented, and it includes a CD ROM that the previous owner never opened that I find to be priceless: a series of illustrations and animations keyed to every chapter, with a non-punitive self-test. Also provided free are an online study guide. Supporting materials include a Student Study Guide and a Student Lecture Notebook that provides illustrations and diagrams to be integrated into the class binder. All are identified by ISBNs, but if you miss page xviii, which outlines “the package,” you will be unaware of the other resources.

Each chapter has the base material, a focus study, a news item, and more often than not, a career link. Each chapter ends with self-study questions. My bottom line: this book, taken seriously, *is* a self-taught graduate program in Geosystems.

The only think I do not see in the book, and it may be in the study guide, is “Recommended Reading.” BUT a complete array of current sources are fully cited as easily visible footnotes on most pages.

The only gap in this book, and it could probably be quickly developed as a supplementary paperback guide and CD, is the avoidance of an integrated discussion of costs and consequences. The entire study of Geosystems is irrelevant unless it can be explained to people in “true cost” terms. While the book excels, for example, at showing the severe drop in aquifers across specific places, it does not provide a guide to calculating current and future costs to society for ignoring these problems and allowing corporations and individuals to continue to externalize to the public and to future generations, the costs of being stupid and greedy today.

First rate book. One of the most serious textbooks, one of the best illustrated, explained, supported, and presented, I have every seen. For serious adults and emerging adults only–this is not a book, nor a class, for dolts just trying to meet a requirement for graduation.