Geochemie : K.H. Wedepohl. Sammlung göschen - Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, 1967, 220 pp., 26 illus., 37 tables, DM.7.80

When a geochemist of international renown like Professor Wedepohl writes a book on geochemistry in the Sammlung Göschen, one logically entertains high hopes that this book will be the long-awaited introductory textbook on geochemistry to be recommended to beginning geochemistry students. Next to this it should give the interested layman a clear understanding of the aims and methods of geochemistry, and still be sufficiently detailed to be of interest to the professional geochemist as well. Maybe all these goals are unattainable in one single volume, and in fact the book falls short of these in several respects.The author has tried to give too much, and instead of limiting himself to a smaller number of problems, he has saved space by merely mentioning several geochemical concepts, without explaining them, or else by presenting many factual data, without trying to bring these together into one framework. The book is therefore inaccessible to laymen without an ample background in geology and petrography. The student who is just beginning his studies in geochemistry might also, on first reading, get the wrong impression that geochemistry is mainly concerned with the collection of analytical facts on all kinds of geological material, without much regard for the ultimate purpose, the unraveling of past or present geological processes. Given these limitations, one should in all fairness point out that Wedepohl has brought together from a prodigious knowledge of the geochemical literature, as well as from his own extensive geochemical work, a wealth of data, touching on all possible fields of geochemistry