This book is the 281st Special Publication of the Geological Society and has been produced to the usual high standard. The women discussed in this book are too numerous to mention but individual accounts are given for Florence Bascom (Clary & Wandersee), Marie Stopes (Falcon-Lang & Miller), Etheldred Benett (Laming & Laming), Grace Anne Milne (Lady Prestwich) (Mather & Campbell), Anne Phillips (Morgan), Clémentine Cuvier and Sophie Duvaucel (Cuvier's daughters; Orr), Muriel Arber (Robinson), Dorothea Bate (Shindler), Maria Matilda Ogilvie Gordon (Wachtler & Burek), Annie Greenly (Williams) and Nancy Kirk (Wyatt).

I settled down to read this book thinking it would be something of a revelation, introducing me to several female geologists I had not been previously aware of. But I have to say that the book proved to be rather a disappointment. The book is cram packed with 21 papers covering a variety of aspects of the history of women in geology, including their input into specific subject areas (papers by Fraser & Cleal; Hart; Creese; Burek & Malpas), specific roles (papers by Burek; Wyse Jackson & Spencer Jones; Higgs & Wyse Jackson; Kölbl-Ebert; Turner), travel (paper by Burek & Kölbl-Ebert) and the contributions of individual women. There is, however, no logical progression to the book overall, and repetition of some information on the careers of prominent individuals suggests that there is a lack of data available.

I found the quality of the papers very mixed, with some excellent examples (e.g. Wachtler & Burek; Falcon-Lang & Miller) providing a lot of detail on their subject and great insights into the lives of individuals. However, other papers lacked any real data at all, leaving me wondering why they had been included and what their relevance was. In at least one paper some of the women discussed are not geologists but zoologists and entomologists, and in others the role of the woman seems to have been a device for discussion of a male relative. This latter point may have arisen due to the lack of information on the women being available; if that is the case why were they included? The editing also leaves a little to be desired in places with figures included but not cited in the text, figures mislabelled and several spelling mistakes.

Although the title of the book suggests it is concerned with the history of women in geology, the introduction (Burek & Higgs) appears to put emphasis on women as role models, but most of the papers deal with women from the 1700s to early 1900s, very different times from those of today. If it was intended for this book to provide role models for young women then I feel it would have been useful to have provided at least one in-depth profile of a living/working female geologist to show the modern situation and how things continue to change.

With few other resources available, the book will provide a useful reference for teachers/lecturers of the history of geology, science and social history in general. However, the definitive book remains to be written.