The Environmental Record in Glaciers and Ice Sheets, edited by Hans Oeschger and C C Langway, Jr., is a compilation of reports from the Dahlem Workshop held in Berlin in March 1988. The book provides an overview of the environmental information stored in polar ice sheets, which is difficult to find in one place. It is aimed at non-specialists who wish to understand how ice sheets store and recover environmental data. The book includes background papers and summary reports from the workshop, which addressed four specific problems: how glaciers record environmental processes, what anthropogenic impacts are recorded in glaciers, how to establish an ice core chronology, and what the long-term ice core record tells us about global environmental changes. The discussions and reports in the book are informative for scientists and students interested in the environmental record of the planet over the past few hundred thousand years. The volume also contains novel ideas, such as the concept of gravitational separation of atmospheric gases in firn, presented for the first time in the paper by Jakob Schwander. The book highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the field, as the information from polar ice sheets is relevant not only to glaciologists but also to those concerned with human impacts on the planet, such as acid rain, heavy metal pollution, and the greenhouse effect. The book is well-structured and provides a general review of the subject along with thought-provoking ideas.The Environmental Record in Glaciers and Ice Sheets, edited by Hans Oeschger and C C Langway, Jr., is a compilation of reports from the Dahlem Workshop held in Berlin in March 1988. The book provides an overview of the environmental information stored in polar ice sheets, which is difficult to find in one place. It is aimed at non-specialists who wish to understand how ice sheets store and recover environmental data. The book includes background papers and summary reports from the workshop, which addressed four specific problems: how glaciers record environmental processes, what anthropogenic impacts are recorded in glaciers, how to establish an ice core chronology, and what the long-term ice core record tells us about global environmental changes. The discussions and reports in the book are informative for scientists and students interested in the environmental record of the planet over the past few hundred thousand years. The volume also contains novel ideas, such as the concept of gravitational separation of atmospheric gases in firn, presented for the first time in the paper by Jakob Schwander. The book highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the field, as the information from polar ice sheets is relevant not only to glaciologists but also to those concerned with human impacts on the planet, such as acid rain, heavy metal pollution, and the greenhouse effect. The book is well-structured and provides a general review of the subject along with thought-provoking ideas.