I vacillated a lot on my rating of this book. On the one hand, it's very well written...in an English-major kind of way. On the other hand, I found the book very slow going because I wasn't learning much...until I would suddenly hit an extremely eye-opening passage. On the third hand, I wanted to dock a star simply because there were far too many biblical bits, but I know that's just my grumpiness at work. And, on the fourth hand, what's with the infinitesimal font?

On the whole, I'd recommend Dirt for people with no background in science who want to become intrigued by soil. If you do know much science, the book might be frustrating, so look for something a little more in depth.