A Traveler's Guide to Mars

In this extraordinary Baedeker—accessible, up-to-date, and prodigiously illustrated with photographs from Mariner 9, Viking, Pathfinder, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the ongoing mars Global Surveyor spacecraft—visitors will encounter:

• Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system, rising three times as high as Mount Everest and covering an area the size of Missouri
• Tharsis Planitia, the "high plains of Mars," with plains rising 29,000 feet—wide enough to cover Europe.
• Valles Marineris, an equatorial canyon so vast that America's Grand Canyon would be a mere tributary.

Plus: the "face" on Mars, the White Rock, the "Canals" of Xanthe—and the first possible evidence of an ancient Martian life-form.

A Traveler's Guide to Mars revitalizes the Red Planet, leaving readers with the urge to don a spacesuit and take a long trip. With the look and heft of a guide to someplace you might actually go, the book presents Mars as a place of canyons and volcanoes, mesas, and barren plains, not that dissimilar from parts of Earth. Author William K. Hartmann, who participated in the Mars Global Surveyor mission, uses all the photos and data collected by scientists in decades of research to give a thorough, yet not boring, overview of the planet. The most exciting stuff is about water--whether it ever flowed on Mars, where it went, why it's hard to find. Beyond that, there are the rocks, dust, and weather to talk about, and Mars has lots of all three. Sidebars, maps, and chronologies help keep the regions and geology of Mars organized. Hartmann never forgets he's writing for the lay reader, and his style is personable and clear. When answering claims of NASA cover-ups, ancient civilizations, and hidden structures on Mars, he calmly lays out the facts and pictures, urging readers to simply examine the evidence. Hartmann offers a tourist's-eye view of one of our most intriguing planetary neighbors and does more to polish NASA's tarnished image than a thousand press releases. --Therese Littleton