Reviewing a book proposal

In between the other things I have been doing I did something I had never done before: I reviewed a book proposal. I had reviewed a book before, but never a book that didn't exist yet. A scientific publisher contacted me with the question whether I was willing to review a proposal some bloke sent them, for a book about ecology within the context of oceanography. I think they had seen my staff webpage where I indicate I teach ocean sciences undergraduates about all sorts. They figured I might be a good candidate.

I'm not an ecologist and neither am I an oceanographer, but I suppose I have to know about all these things to a certain level in order to do my job properly. So I said yes. And I thought it might be interesting.

The documentation was an extensive proposal about the book, with a synopsis of every chapter, and some background information about what size it would be and who they had in mind as the audience. And then some samples of the author’s writing.

The one thing that I found most unusual about this book was that it had an extensive section on the history of human exploration of the seas. You don't normally get that! You might very well get a bit about how people found out about plate tectonics, because without plate tectonics you can't understand the oceans, and maybe something about the earliest sediment cores and the stable isotopic records that came from them, which have explained so much about our climate system. But this guy went further! It even had information about boat design. And navigation.

An octant; to be covered in this book. 

I thought it was quite a comprehensive proposal; there was only one topic of which I thought they weren't giving enough information by far. But I was wondering a little bit about the balance of the three sections the book comprised of. I thought it would be better with four, but if you split the one I didn't see as a unit, you ended up with two rather short sections and two rather long ones. I am not going to go into detail; I consider the material of the book confidential until it is published. But I think the things I say in this post are general enough.

I don't know if this book will ever end up written, but I must say I hope so. But I hope they manage to address the things I thought were suboptimal. I will see! I would expect them to contact me if it does hit the market; given that they know I teach in that field, I'm sure they'd want me to ask the library to buy some. So I'd find out.

I get paid in books. They'll have to ship from the USA, so it could take a while, but I look forward to getting some new knowledge in exchange for my applied knowledge!