This multi-authored book is the most recent in a line of conference volumes published in the last ten years dealing with aeolian geomorphology, and beginning with the book with that title edited by Bill Nickling in 1986. Like that volume, this one stems from a conference in North America, containing papers given at the 1992 Association of American Geographers meeting. Thirty-seven authors contribute to 14 papers in Tchakerian's volume, covering a range of themes with a strong United States orientation. Eight of the papers are the result of research into aeolian processes and landscapes in the U.S., and although some of these are predominantly regional in emphasis, all contain developments, data and interpretations that add to the evergrowing font of aeolian knowledge.
The editor's own contribution is as co-author of one of the research papers, and as author of an introductory chapter that explains the resurgence of aeolian geomorphology in the late twentieth century. Measuring the history of research with a new absolute chronology, the Bagnoldian scale, Tchakerian spells out nine reasons for the recent rebirth of the study of the geomorphological role of wind. This chapter is succinct and will be a useful teaching reference.
Of the other 13 chapters, two deal with aeolian dust, two with wind erosion (specifically ventifacts) and one with aeolian modification of glacial moraines by sediment inputs and erosion. In fact, one of the papers on erosion, by Dorn, actually deals with the development of ventifacts on moraines and their potential use in relative dating, so that two papers are in the field of glacio-aeolian studies. The remaining papers all concern facets of sand transport and dune geomorphology. With the exception of the paper by Tsoar et al. on the changing character of linear dunes in the Sinai-Negev desert, which combines remote sensing and field study, all are from North America, but cover a range of