This is another volume in the prestigious Concepts series by SEPM. The author, Wolfgang Schlager, has been one of the major influences in carbonate sedimentology, especially contributing to our understanding of large scale processes.

The book contains nine chapters plus appendices. Chapter 1 is a brief review of ocean circulation, basic carbonate chemistry, and ecological factors such as nutrients in influencing carbonate production. Chapter 2 focuses on the carbonate factory including Schlager's three models (tropical, cool water and microbial). It also looks at erosional processes, and very briefly at carbonate rock description and porosity. I was disappointed not to see some reference made to Luis Pomar's approach to carbonate production and factories which is now well cited. Chapter 3 addresses, briefly, the geometries of carbonate accumulations although I was confused by the concept of attached and detached ramps. Chapter 5 covers facies models and includes what are best described as standard microfacies types, a useful if not popular approach to describing facies associations. This chapter does not provide any detailed coverage of facies types. Chapter 5 looks at rhythms and events in carbonate stratigraphy, covering autocyclicity, orbital forcing, ice-house and greenhouse and other secular changes; again the coverage is brief and I expected to see a discussion of the newer contributions to the ongoing dispute over auto- and allocyclic processes and platform interior stratigraphies. Chapter 6 is devoted to the fundamentals of sequence stratigraphy, and covers basic concepts and issues of seismic recognition. It also discusses the author's ideas on the fractal model. Chapter 7 is a more detailed look at sequence stratigraphy of tropical factory systems and I found this a most useful review. Chapter 8 does the same for both the cool water and microbial factories, but this is a very brief chapter. The last, again very brief, chapter is entitled ‘Looking back, looking forward’ and offers some personal thoughts by the author. There are three appendices, one each on fractals, modelling programmes and the principles of reflection seismology.

For the ‘bigger picture’ aspects this book provides an excellent summary. I personally have some unease about such ‘big picture’ approaches because in carbonate sedimentology, which lacks the safety of physically-based models and the comfort of experiments, many basic processes are poorly understood. Sedimentologists look for simple explanations, and often find ones that are sufficiently simple that they present no challenge to our ignorance. There is a groundswell of new ideas in carbonate sedimentology and I do not see that captured in this book, although that was not its purpose.

I will be insisting my research students read this book and I will encourage undergraduates to use it. I will not be lending my copy to anyone as I want to read through it again, to learn more. All geological libraries, both academic and industrial, must have a copy of this book. Would I have bought a copy if I had not received a review copy? Yes, and I should have ordered one and read it when it first came out.