– The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: The Sunday Times Bestseller, The Untold Story of a Lost World

For anyone who likes dinosaurs and prehistoric life this is a College-Level education but written in a very accessible way. The writing style is so good, so informative and easy to digest. Some parts touch on the in-depth science but never so deep that you drown in information or statistics. Every aspect of this book is enjoyable and inspiring. There are some books that when finished you know you will read again some day. I am tempted to restart right now. From the earliest times of the precursors of dinosaurs through the myriad types, with an occasional focus on one or two, and then through to the end of this amazingly successful lineage of dinosaurs. This book has it all. Did I say I loved it? Well I do.

This is the second of Steve Brusatte's books that I have read and , like the book on mammals, I was hooked by how this author explains how dinosaurs evolved and the worlds in which they lived. It is a real page-turner but also has the advantage over other dinosaur books that I have read insofar that it considers the geographical distribution of dinosaurs so that you can appreciate not only how dinosaur's evolved but an understanding of how they were distributed. I had never really thought about why this was the case. The science is clear and concise to read. There is a lot about the scientists who made the discoveries or explored the data to go beyond the fossil record and explain more about the ecosystems in which these dinosaurs lived. I think that the efforts to understand the ecosystems of those times goes a long way towards making the prehistoric animals more realistic. I love the way that the dinosaurs are made to fit into their landscapes. This book makes them more understandable with sauropods being described as being adapted for differing plant diets. There is so much to recommend about this book although the two closing chapters and bird evolution and the extinction of the dinosaurs were stand outs for me. I think that there are three elements of this book that could improve it. I wish that there was a picture of every dinosaur mentioned and also think that this book is so fascinating that I could have read another 400 pages. Combining the familiar with the unfamiliar, I wish that he had looked a other dinosaurs or considered other parts of the globe like Australia. Everything Steve Brussatte mentions really grabbed my attention and I felt I wanted to learn more as this world was both so alien and was wildly different for my days of collecting dinosaur tea cards. Whilst this book is recommended, the sequel that dealt with the rise of mammals is even more fascinating and more relatable. I would recommend the dinosaur book but suggest that the sequel is so thought-provoking that it will change your perspective whenever you visit a zoo. I hope that this author will write more on prehistoric animals. The books are impossible to put down. Recommended.

I have always been interested in paleontology in a very, very amateur way. I found this book very readable but the scientific names of the fossils used are hard to keep track of in my ageing brain. By the time I was about halfway through, though still enjoying the information, and admiring the ingenuity and intelligence that had gone into it's finding, I started to wonder what sort of people make a living by studying and devoting untold resources to finding out if a 100 million year old dead fossilised animal had this characteristic or another. All of the characters (fellow scientists) mentioned by the author sound like people I would be happy to avoid and would never, ever go to the pub with. His thumbnail sketches of these people can be summed up as wierdo obsessive geeks. This did put a bit of a damper on my enjoyment of the information being presented. Call me odd but there it is. When the author devotes himself to "factual" information he can write very well indeed his description of the Asteroid impact that did for the dinosaurs is very good as is his explanation of how dinosaurs did, in fact, survive to the present day... as birds. It was not quite the book I hoped for or expected but it is very good and I recommend it.

I rarely read non-fiction. I chose this book because I am obsessed with tectonics, vulcanism and continental drift, and I am very interested in prehistory. I knew that there’d be up-to-date information on the history of our changing planet and that I would learn something I didn’t know. This book is not only a revelation on every page, but it is so beautifully written that you become immersed in the timeline, with every event and creature coming to life on the page. Steve Brusatte’s obsession becomes your obsession. As you read, you develop a deeper understanding of the dedication and determination of Steve and all his colleagues to find answers to the most fundamental questions you may have. You feel their excitement and joy in discovery. You feel their frustration when the pieces don’t fit. They work so hard to understand and even harder to explain their findings. The book takes you on a journey from the very beginning of life on Earth and fills that journey with awe and wonder. The science is explained in a way that informs without being over-complicated or condescending, and the book is so compelling I struggled to put it down. If you’re not a fan of non-fiction, read it anyway. It is the greatest story ever told.

This was a deep dive into very ancient history, the time of the dinosaurs but also the time of their discovery through more recent ages. The narrative is lively and engaging and even at the end of the book, there is the definitive sense that not yet everything has been said on the subject and that there are still more discoveries to be made.

The enthusiasm of the author shines out on every page of this excellent book. Some have called it popular science, but I think that it falls somewhere between that and a scientific paper that only an expert would understand. It is not the easiest of reads because the descriptions of some of the dinosaurs needs the background knowledge of either a paleontology student or of a six year old dinosaur fanatic. However, that does not diminish the pleasure of reading this book. The at times overwhelming amount of information cannot be avoided, but once understood gives great satisfaction. I particularly liked the flights into imagination, which brought the dinosaurs to life. Just enough to not affect the scholarly aspect of the book. The best thing about this book is, I feel, the level of explanation about how the dinosaurs were related to each other, why different dinosaurs are found in different parts of the world, and how technology is increasing our understanding. A thoroughly good read, but keep Google ready to call up pictures of the more obscure creatures.

This is a fascinating and enjoyable read - and I recommend it to anyone interested in the history of dinosaur exploration. The author adopts a novel approach, offering a narrative consisting of two distinct elements. On the one hand, this is a tale about the dinosaurs themselves - how they lived, their habitats, ecosystems, etc. And on the other hand, it's a story about developments in the science of palaeontology (as relate to dinosaur excavation and investigation). The author - who is himself a palaeontologist - bends these two elements together, and shifts focus between them from one chapter to the next. So, for example, you'll get a chapter about the extinction event that ended the Cretaceous period - looking in detail at how this affected the dinosaurs. Then, in the following chapter, you'll read about the competing ideas offered by different scientists as regards the reason for the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. This is not an academic textbook or scholarly treatise. Rather, it's a work in popular science. It's easy to read and understand. The subject matter is engrossing. Of course, the author simplifies much of what went on - as he covers a period of some 180 million years of dinosaur evolution and extinction. On occasion, he adopts a slightly hyperbolic stance - as if writing fiction (e.g. describing how a group of T. Rex's experienced the cataclysmic day that ended the Mesozoic era). Nonetheless, it's fun to read.

The author manages to provide a wealth of information in an extremely accessible format and a writing style which engages from the start. It shouldn't be possible to condense hundreds of millions of years into 300- odd pages, but Dr Brusatte achieves it with style. For anyone who has never lost their childhood love of dinosaurs- or for those who are rediscovering it- this is the ideal book. Highly recommended.