For the last couple of weeks I've been making my way through A Brief History of the Earth (subtitle "Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters") by Andrew H. Knoll. Brief shout-out to the author for including the (anti-)neutrino among the products associated with beta decay in his discussion of radiometric dating.
Nice book so far (I've reached the last chapter). I had a rough appreciation for much of the subject matter coming in, but it is clear that there has been much progress since the last time I read up on the discipline. Some open questions have been answered outright, and many details have come into focus where rough outlines existed before. All very cool.
One detail of the writing, however, is worthy of special mention. The bibliography for each chapter is divided into two sections: "Approachable Readings" and "More Technical References". I sorely wish I'd thought to use "approachable" as a description of pop-sci material more often in the past.
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