A richly illustrated study of the Red Planet utilizes a travel guide format to bring together recent scientific discoveries about Mars, describing such features as its dry riverbeds, huge volcano, possible ancient sea floor, impact craters, and more, all enhanced by a collection of photographs, maps, and artist renderings. Original. A Traveler's Guide to Mars revitalizes the Red Planet, leaving readers with the urge to don a spacesuit 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 organized. 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 civilizations, 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 neighbors and does more to polish NASA's tarnished image than a thousand press releases. --Therese Littleton Adult/High School-A perfect choice for students who are interested in Mars or space exploration. Following an opening chapter discussing what humans have believed and have come to verify about the red planet, the author discusses the three major eras of its 4.5 billion year history. He describes various regions, offering a geological tour of the craters, volcanoes, and the face of Mars, making it easy for readers to "visit," much as any travel book would. Interspersed throughout are boxed inserts highlighting weather, hazards, financial considerations, geology, etc. Also appearing periodically are sections called "My Martian Chronicles" in which the astronomer describes his own work and experiences in his quest to learn more about this unusual planet. His writing style will make teens want to keep reading. Hundreds of outstanding photographs and digital images clarify concepts and sharpen subtle landscapes. Many are close-ups reproduced from the work of landing craft; most are in color. If you can have only one title about Mars, this is the one to buy. Claudia Moore, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Is Mars letting us down? In the 1980s and early 1990s, many planetary scientists got the sinking feeling that the Red Planet wasn't living up to humanity's expectations. Its surface was lifeless, its volcanoes extinct. Evidence of an Earth-like past was looking shaky. When I entered graduate school in planetary science during this period, I was discouraged from doing research on Mars, as the data from the Viking spacecraft of the mid-1970s had been thoroughly picked over. Follow-up missions from the U.S. and the Soviet Union floundered. Scientists found themselves pitted against "Face on Mars" conspiracy theorists in television debates. Even through these dark years, veteran researcher William K. Hartmann held that Mars was not, in fact, geologically dead. He reasoned that some of the terrain was so fresh, so free of meteor craters, that at least some of the volcanoes were not extinct, merely dormant. It was a minority view--but no longer. New space missions have found signs not just of recent volcanism but of glaciers, liquid water and periodic climate change. Things are looking up again for the Red Planet, and Hartmann's latest book encapsulates this understanding. The author, who works at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., has been around long enough to see sentiment about Mars go through several cycles of bust and boom. He recalls the first observations by the Mariner 9 spacecraft in 1971. Its predecessors had already dashed hopes of a world covered in vegetation, and the global dust storm that greeted Mariner 9's arrival deepened the gloom. But as the dust cleared, a mountain with no equal in human experience--so big that it would span the state of Missouri--slowly came into view: Olympus Mons. The outlines of a sublime canyon system gradually took shape: Valles Marineris. It was as if the dust had erased all those prior expectations and allowed Mars to reveal itself on its own terms. Hartmann's book is being marketed as a travel guide, but it is best thought of as an extended argument for the persistence of geologic activity. The main concession to the guidebook conceit is its region-b