The history of palaeontology and prehistoric archaeology is an area which is seeing some timely expansion. Claudine Cohen, the author of numerous excellent works in these areas, has here produced a wide-ranging book which cuts across the philosophy and history of the deep-time sciences, providing methodological and conceptual orientation for the field along with a series of provocative and interesting case studies. Opening with certain questions: ‘How can we know the prehistoric past of nature and man? How can we reconstruct ‘lost worlds’ and the development of extinct lineages?’ (p. 11), Cohen uses the ‘method of Zadig’ of the title as the central organizing principle. This relates to the story taken from Voltaire, of a Mesopotamian hermit-sage who was able to deduce the passage and physical features of the Babylonian royal family's lost dog and horse solely from their tracks. This imaginative reconstruction of an organism from its traces and fragments is taken as the prime model of palaeontological work – an example presaged by both Georges Cuvier and Thomas Henry Huxley, who themselves highlighted the Zadig story in this sense (albeit with different emphases).

This connection of literary and philosophical references with the changing methods of scientific knowledge carries across Cohen's highly stimulating account. Cohen makes a strong persistent case characterizing palaeontological sciences in particular, and ‘historical sciences’ like geology, archaeology and prehistory more generally, in these terms: in addition to tying themselves to changing understandings of scientific laws and processes, they require conjecture, intuition and creativity to uncover, interpret and relate various historical ‘traces’ of ancient life, development and environment. In this way, both an imaginative artistic sense and claims to scientific authority have moved in tandem in these fields across the ages. To trace these processes, the book follows three sets of vignette-like case studies drawn from the eighteenth century to the present day. The first (and most original) is on the history of palaeoichnology, the study of fossil trackways and footprints, moving through chapters on the nineteenth-century American naturalist Edward Hitchcock, the history of research on invertebrate and vertebrate trackways, and hominid and human foot- and handprints. The second section examines anatomical, phylogenetic and genetic reconstructions largely within the history of palaeontology, and the third deals with questions of authenticity and methods of knowing, focusing on palaeoanthropology and prehistoric archaeology. This presents an elegant thematic structure, linking consistent themes across a long duration to investigate the wide range of methods and types of evidence used by the deep-time sciences. This is supported throughout with lively examples and anecdotes, and (particularly noteworthy) fantastic illustrations, with numerous photographs, colour and line drawings and tables – something essential given the topics at hand.

With the range and variety of these case studies, there is, of course, bound to be some unevenness. The deeper, more focused chapters tend to be the most effective. Particularly strong is the chapter on phylogenetic patterns, which opens with a discussion of historical interpretations of equine evolution before broadening into a rich account of the tensions within arrangements of the ‘tree of life’, through the varied attempts to reconcile overarching theories and hypotheses, understood developmental laws and principles, and the often gap-filled fossil record. Meanwhile, in the broader chapters, there is sometimes the impression that rather too much is being brought in than can be dealt with in the space provided. One notable example is Chapter 4 on anatomical reconstructions, which moves through Cuvier, Owen and Darwin's reconstructive methods, the Cambrian fauna, high-tech imaging, and Charles R. Knight and Zdeněk Burian's palaeoart, in a slightly dizzying thirty pages. The examples are all thought-provoking, but the reader could not help but feel that focusing on fewer would have made the points more strongly.

The case studies themselves include the well known (the Crystal Palace dinosaurs, the Moulin-Quignon affair and the Piltdown controversy all feature) and the more novel. The former are certainly put in a new light through their connection with the book's core argument, while the latter open up interesting new areas for research. The highlight is the first chapter, on ‘Hitchcock's birds’ (pun surely intended), which raises fascinating issues concerning the relations between scientific and religious interpretations in the early nineteenth-century United States. Given that Edward Hitchcock's discoveries of dinosaur footprints in New England (and interpretation of them as a series of gigantic extinct bird species) are widely cited in more popular palaeontological works, but his activity falls within a period which has been relatively neglected in the more specialist historiography, this is a highly valuable account. Similar things could be said about the discussion of ‘traceology’ and experimental techniques in Soviet prehistoric archaeology in the twentieth century. This touches on an area which is almost completely unresearched in the history of the modern human sciences, and is here presented as having tremendous impact on archaeological understandings of humanity.

Given that a large portion of this book focuses on debates in Britain and the United States (also connected with French, Russian and, to a lesser extent, German developments), this would be of wide interest to anglophone scholars, and it is to be strongly hoped that a translation appears in the next few years. The book's wide range and methodological insights are reasons to recommend it highly, and suggest that it would repay several rereadings. The diversity of material and largely non-chronological structure mean that readers already familiar with the history of palaeontology and prehistoric archaeology will greatly enjoy the juxtaposition of canonical and little-studied episodes, although those approaching the subject for the first time may need a textbook on hand. However, this would certainly be of benefit, as there is material for a wide range of possible readers here – not only historians of the deep-time sciences, but also those interested in the interplay of art and science, criteria of evidence, and changes in scientific knowledge across the modern period.