A Traveller's Guide to Mars: The Mysterious Landscapes of the Red Planet Book

A Traveler's Guide to Mars revitalises the Red Planet, leaving readers with the urge to don spacesuits and take a long trip. With the look and heft of a guide to someplace you might actually go, the book presents Mars as a place of canyons and volcanoes, mesas and barren plains, not that dissimilar from parts of Earth. Author William K Hartmann, who participated in the Mars Global Surveyor mission, uses all the photos and data collected by scientists in decades of research to give a thorough, yet not boring, overview of the planet. The most exciting stuff is about water--whether it ever flowed on Mars, where it went, why it's hard to find. Beyond that, there are the rocks, dust and weather to talk about, and Mars has lots of all three. Sidebars, maps, and chronologies help keep the regions and geology of Mars organised. Hartmann never forgets he's writing for the lay reader, and his style is personable and clear. When answering claims of NASA cover-ups, ancient civilisations and hidden structures on Mars, he calmly lays out the facts and pictures, urging readers to simply examine the evidence. Hartmann offers a tourist's-eye view of one of our most intriguing planetary neighbours and does more to polish NASA's tarnished image than a thousand press releases. --Therese Littleton, Amazon.comRead More