'This volume should become a standard textbook for any type of vegetation scientist, biographer, and evolutionary biologist, student and teacher alike. Paleoecologists will find it equally worthwhile for its concise and state-of-the-art introduction into principles of palynology, and for its specific regional overviews.' V. Markgraf, Arctic and Alpine Research, 21:4 'The book should be made available as widely as possible to students and to their teachers. It may then help to contribute in some measure to providing an alternative set of empirical models to be ranged against the insane star-wars optimism of the current and proposed climate and IGBP models which, like the medlar, will be 'rotten before they are half ripe'. This is no laughing matter. Our children's lives may be at stake.' Journal of Biogeography, 17:6, 1990
