WE DUG UP THE WORLD

A dig into some of the greatest hits of not just archaeology, but paleontology and geology, too.

Written and designed in accordance with the principle that anything worth doing is worth overdoing, this highlight reel survey offers an outstanding gallery of finds with clear explanations of their significance—framed, unfortunately, in bursts of overwrought, pun-tastic prose that has been set in arbitrary mixes of font and typeface and scattered in sometimes hard-to-follow bits angled or curved to fit around busy montages of small workers, bystanders, sites, and artifacts. The rewards of staying the course are many, though: Along with the familiar likes of the Rosetta Stone (“a discovery that would ROCK the world”) and the location of the literally “Earth-shattering” asteroid that put paid to all the nonflying dinosaurs, readers are treated to plenty of less high-profile finds, from fossilized poop in Spain that proved Neanderthals to be omnivores and a spear point found in a prehistoric bison that pushed human presence in North America back at least 7,000 years (“incredi-BULL”) to the clean underwear in King Tut’s tomb. Stewart opens with an acknowledgment that many artifacts are stolen goods at the outset and notes that the proto-human dubbed Lucy by her American finders is named Dinkinesh in her native Ethiopia. Harris adds a dark-skinned young tour guide to illustrations; other characters are racially diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Pun-ishing prose aside, a treasure chest of insights into our past, and our planet’s, too.