Fuels for the Future; Waste Recycling and Re-use; Keeping Water Clean; Keeping the Air Clean

The emergence of this quartet in paperback is long overdue, and the failure to update their bibliographies must go down as a missed chance. That said, though, the reappearance of these excellent primers of environmental strategy is much to be welcomed. The authors have all achieved star quality in their fields and the even-handedness of their approach creates a model of objectivity in a subject area which, despite its increasing familiarity, can still bring out the hysteric in many a less able writer (and editor).

Parker's mood is, as usual, friendly/technical. In Fuels he ranges through conventional fuels (not omitting food) before examining energy conservation and the change of lifestyle that may accompany it. Nicely, he makes no distinction between primary energy resources such as sun and wind and the real 'alternatives' which are fossil fuels - many authors see it the other way round.

Waste is memorably provocative of thought. An energy-saving light bulb is more polluting to manufacture than an ordinary one; plastic bottles take less energy to produce than glass ones and are just as recyclable. Parker demonstrates at every turn that the arguments about recycling are not as simple as your average bottlebanker believes. Not that this changes the cardinal principle that the best way of recycling is re-use.

Water is the least renewable resource of all. There is no new water, anywhere, ever. We have to use the same stuff over and over again. So we have to clean it. McLeish's exhaustive study of how this is best and most often done makes a really good read, and his underlying theme of 'Simple does not always mean not as good' is convincingly substantiated by many examples.

Of all the pollution-inspired changes around us none is more noticeable to us ordinary folk than our inceasingly extreme weather patterns. Baines explains the complexities of climate change, atmospheric pollution, and countermeasures thereto in the skilfully straightforward way that typifies all members of this series.

So, welcome back to these four - they're as good as any you'll get and should be considered by any library. And if you missed them when they first came out, as another Parker once crucially observed: 'Now's the time!'