Much like the furthest reaches of space or the darkest depths of oceans, the early history of the Earth is largely undiscovered territory. Hugh Rollinson sets out in his book Early Earth Systems: A Geochemical Approach to summarize what we know (and don't know) about this enigmatic portion of our planet's evolution. He does an excellent job of it. His approach, stated in the first chapter, is not just to examine the Earth's various parts (core, mantle, crust, oceans, atmosphere, biosphere), but to examine how these parts have interacted over geologic time, particularly in the first two billion years of the Earth's existence. Did life stabilize the liquid water oceans? Did these liquid water oceans instigate the formation of the continents through subduction of hydrated oceanic crust? Did the production and consequent weathering of continental crust draw down CO₂ and cool the atmosphere? How did this feedback onto the biosphere? These are the sorts of connections that Hugh seeks to highlight, and on the whole does extremely well.

The first chapter sets out the general scope of the book, particularly noting the ‘systems science’ approach, and introduces the reader to the basic geology of the early Earth. The second, third and fourth chapters cover the solid Earth, from its formation in the Solar System, through its evolution to its current state. In the fifth and sixth chapters, we reach the Earth's surface, and the evolution of the atmosphere and early life are discussed. Given the modest 285 pages of the book, only a brief sketch of the existing knowledge on each topic can be given, but Hugh does this very adeptly and efficiently. Inevitably, review books skip some important topics while overindulging in others, but here we appear to have an exception. There were no topics I found missing, and the weighting on each section was nicely balanced. There is somewhat of a bias towards the solid Earth sections of the book, which are particularly well done. This is perhaps not surprising given this is Hugh's area of expertise.

Hugh has an easy writing style that lets him pack in a surprising amount of information into a short space, without the text becoming too dense. Part of this is due to the good structure of the book, which includes insets that explain geochemical jargon words as well as fundamental concepts (such as isotopic dating or mass-dependent fractionation of stable isotopes) and synopses at the beginning of each chapter. This allows the text to flow nicely, and at the same time allows readers new to the field to find out what the heck δ³³S‰ is. One feature of the text that I particularly appreciated is that Hugh not only gives the general consensus view, but also references dissenting voices. Thus, while he paints a clear and definite picture of the early Earth (to the extent that this is possible), he makes the reader well aware that it is a painting still in progress. The text is admirably up to date (including ¹⁴²Nd and ³³S results that were published just a year before the book itself) and well referenced.

There are no major flaws to report, though the low quality of the figures comes close. While they do not interfere with understanding the concepts in the text, the misshapen points and poorly rendered lines of many of the figures are noticeable, particularly against the backdrop of the book's high quality text and structure, and its £34.99 price tag.

The book would be perfect for a graduate-level or upper-level undergraduate course on the early Earth. It will also serve as a great starting point for researchers in solid-Earth geochemistry who want to know more about the Earth's early atmosphere and biosphere, and vice versa for low-temperature geochemists who want to get a modern overview of the Earth's interior.