Somebody once said that if the world were only a few feet across people would consider it a marvel and do everything they could to protect it instead of despoiling it.  Here is our planet in miniature – cooked up by those wizards at the Unseen University along with the rest of our solar system.  They call it Roundworld and it fascinates them to the extent that they want to find out all about it.

And so they do.  Hard science with interleaved laughs is a good way to describe this book, which shows the reader the wonders of our beleaguered earth through the eyes of other beings.  From Death of the Dinosaurs to Ways to Leave Your Planet it is all here – the current sum of our scientific knowledge in a handy nutshell.  In between the science the Discworld characters have their say about it all and we can have a laugh at their antics but a good long ponder perhaps at this planet we call our home.

Refreshingly different it might just make some people who read it wonder why too many people take the world for granted.