I agree with Bill's review of Art's excellent book. I'll add that the
publishing of this translation of the book was stuck until the International
Union of Speleology (UIS) provided the financial support to make it possible.
The UIS' work often happens quietly and unsung. In fact, I frequently hear
people erroneously call it the ICS, which is the UIS' International Congress of
Speleology. I'm mentioning this because it is time the UIS starts being
recognized for its work.
For more information on the UIS, visit its website: www.uis-speleo.org.
George
Sent from my mobile phone
********************
George Veni, Ph.D.
Executive Director
National Cave and Karst Research Institute
400-1 Cascades Avenue
Carlsbad, New Mexico 88220-6215
USA
Office: 575-887-5517
Mobile: 210-863-5919
Fax: 575-887-5523
gv...@nckri.org
www.nckri.org
-------- Original message --------
From: Mixon Bill <bmixon...@austin.rr.com>
Date: 2013/09/23 21:53 (GMT-07:00)
To: Cavers Texas <texascavers@texascavers.com>
Subject: [Texascavers] book review: Geología de Cuevas
There is a very nice new book on cave geology:
Geología de Cuevas
by Arthur Palmer
translated by Javier Mugica Jeréonimo of the Sociedad Espeológica de
Cuba
ISBN 978-0-939748-66-2
502 pages softbound
published by Cave Books for the Unión Internacional de Espeleología
This is the review I wrote of the original English-language edition:
"Cave Geology." Arthur N. Palmer. Cave Books, Dayton, Ohio; 2007. ISBN
978-0-939748-66-2. 8.5 by 11 inches, vi + 454 pages, hardbound. $37.95.
I was looking forward to this book during all the years it was
rumored to be forthcoming, because even Palmer’s journal articles are
unusually lucid. I am not disappointed. This is a very nice book.
In the first nine chapters, Palmer leads the reader through all
the principles of the geology of solution caves, from elementary
concepts of geology through difficult topics like the chemistry and
dynamics of limestone dissolution. To have done all this in a way that
should be understandable to a high-school senior is a considerable
feat of organization and ability to anticipate students’ questions.
There is no calculus, and where algebraic equations are used, he
generally walks the reader through a numerical example. He is careful
to clarify things that might be misunderstood, such as that by
'lower,' applied to a negative quantity such as delta34S, he means
more negative, not closer to 0. He is careful to define technical
terms he uses, and he even footnotes the pronunciation of things like
gneiss, polje, and Cvijic, a boon to those of us who learn our geology
from books instead of lectures. When a mechanism is of possible
theoretical interest but unlikely to be significant except in unusual
circumstances, he is careful to point that out. In some of the later
of these chapters, his enthusiasm for giving examples from around the
world does result in a few that are just curiosities and others that
are not explained very clearly or completely. This and a certain
amount of gratuitous citing of references are symptoms of some
indecision about whether the book was to be a textbook or a scholarly
monograph, but at least the reader is exposed to the full diversity of
solution caves.
Subsequent chapters discuss cave minerals, lava caves, airflow
and weathering in caves, and dating of passages and speleothems. A
chapter on research techniques describes Palmer’s methods for making
careful and accurate vertical surveys of passages in order to study
the effect of geologic structure on a cave, a specialty of his, and
also briefly mentions geophysical techniques, although even a
professional geologist will need specialist help with those. The
fifteenth chapter briefly surveys applications of cave geology to
other fields like land management and water supply. There are over 750
figures, nearly two per page. The roughly one thousand references
listed are almost all in English and almost all from books or academic
journals on paper (the scholarly monograph won out here).
The layout by the author is fully professional, and there are
only a very few typos or editing glitches.
"Cave Geology" is not only the best major book on the subject
available, it is also the cheapest. The main text is 405 large pages
with two columns of fairly small type, so there is a lot there, and
you won't read it in a couple of days or even a week. And, while you
should understand most of it while you're reading it, you won't have
learned it all. I still haven't, even with the help of the other ten
thousand pages of cave geology I've read over too many years. But you
will absorb the general ideas, and this is the book you will go back
to later for the details.
(Sorry, but about all the Spanish I know is "más cerveza." Perhaps
someone will translate this or, better, buy the book and write his own
review.)
The only source I know of so far is Javier Mugica Jerónimo, Grupo SAMA,
Sociedad Espeleológica de Cuba, speleo...@gmail.com. The price is US
$38. I hope there it will soon be easily available in Mexico, Spain,
and other Spanish-speaking countries. -- Bill Mixon
PS That was written for a Mexican e-mail list. The English edition is
available from Cave Books for $38.95, from the NSS bookstore for
$46.75, from Speleobooks for $49.95, and from Amazon for $37.96, plus
shipping in all cases. To repeat the (not quite) bottom line in my
review: "Cave Geology" is not only the best major book on the subject
available, it is also the cheapest.
----------------------------------------
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is
absolutely fatal.
----------------------------------------
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