Dutton's 1882 Tertiary History is a literary and scientific masterpiece: those who have read Thoreau and Muir will certainly agree with Stephen Pyne that this work is more imaginative than that of the other giants 19th-century nature writing. Too, I find the prose more compelling than that of Thoreau. And while some of the science (i.e., interpretation) may have changed since Dutton's original study, the data that Dutton presents with both care and flair has not. But an extremely important part of this book is the illustrations, specifically the wood-cut lithographs of drawings by Thomas Moran and William Holmes. These were not added to the original book as flourishes; they were, in addition to their beauty, illustrations of the scientific and aesthetic points Dutton was making in the text. Looking at an 1882 original, or even at the 1977 Peregrine Smith reproduction, one discovers these illustrations to be a delight: the capabilities, even in a black-and-white lithograph, to produce subtleties of light and shadow are astonishing. Not so in this UofA Press production. Their lack of care in figure replication and in overseeing the printing process has ruined most of the beauty of the lithographs: most are so over-inked that much of the detail is lost and the figures seem dull and lifeless. In fact, many of these lithographs are better replicated in the...Penguin Nature Classics paperback version of John Wesley Powell's Exploration of the Colorado River. UofA Press has done a great disservice to an important work. Save your [money]. Go to a library and delight in one of the earlier versions. Too, the entire Atlas that accompanied the monograph can be viewed on the WWW through the Library of Congress site.