hese two tackle two great mysteries of the past pyramids and dinosaursby exploring various theories of their respective creation and demise. The concept is intriguing; the presenta- tion is not. True, the texts adequately explore opposing theories, from serious to silly, from Pharaoh's tombs to pyra- mid power, from mini-brained dinosaurs to the Nemesis theory. But the dull two-color illustrations do little to maintain readers' interest, and in Pyramids, particularly, many of the theories deal more with the occult or superstition than with history or science. Macaulay's Pyramid (Houghton, 1975) is still a better source for the mechanics of pyramid building. Dinosaurs, on the other hand, does cover some of the more contemporary scientific theories about dinosaur extinction, although it devotes more space to the Nemesis theory of extinction, which has been refuted by many scientists, than to some less dramatic but more accepted hypotheses. Purchase only as a supplemental text if requests for information on dinosaur extinction (not dinosaurs per se) are high.
--Cathryn A. Camper, Minneapolis Public Library

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