Wiley‐Blackwell Encyclopedia of Human Evolution

This two volume hardbound set aims to provide a fairly comprehensive reference work to the fascinating area of human evolution; or as the book terms it “an authoritative and accessible source of information about the hominin clade of the tree of life”. Drawing on an international team of talented evolutionary scientists with broad and comprehensive coverage, at first glance it seems that this would be an excellent addition to any science or institutional library. And then I caught sight of the price tag.

We will return to that later. The book opens with a list of the writers which is...