Planets and their atmospheres

Abstract

There is no adequate, broadly based, yet thorough textbook in planetary science. One suspects several reasons for this: the field is changing rapidly and texts are threatened by obsolescence, the field is so broad and interdisciplinary that no person or small group of people could hope to do it justice, the appropriate authors are too busy doing science or NASA committee work, or maybe it is simply a thankless task (certainly not a lucrative one, given the small scientific community involved). In these circumstances, John Lewis and Ron Prinn should be highly commended for their scholarly attempt to summarize part of the spectrum of disciplines involved in planetary science. Their new text may be a very personal (some would say idiosyncratic) view of planetary atmospheres, and has an overwhelmingly chemical perspective, but it is without peer. I expect it to become an invaluable reference source for most planetary scientists. It is not, in my view, a suitable text for a course, but more on that later.

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