The case history approach has an impressive record of success in a variety of disciplines. Collections of case histories, casebooks, are now widely used in all sorts of specialties other than in their familiar appli cation to law and medicine. The case method had its formal beginning at Harvard in 1871 when Christopher Lagdell developed it as a means of teaching. It was so successful in teaching law that it was soon adopted in medical education, and the collection of cases provided the raw material for research on various diseases. Subsequently, the case history approach spread to such varied fields as business, psychology, management, and economics, and there are over 100 books in print that use this approach. The idea for a series of Casehooks in Earth Science grew from my experience in organizing and editing a collection of examples of one variety of sedimentary deposits. The prqject began as an effort to bring some order to a large number of descriptions of these deposits that were so varied in presentation and terminology that even specialists found them difficult to compare and analyze. Thus, from the beginning, it was evident that something more than a simple collection of papers was needed. Accordingly, the nearly fifty contributors worked together with George de Vries Klein and me to establish a standard format for presenting the case histories.

This revised and expanded new edition is a meticulously documented resource dealing with the age-old creation/evolution controversy. The author, who received a PhD from M.I.T., carefully explains and illustrates scientific evidence from biology, astronomy, and the physical and earth sciences that relates to origins and the flood. The hydroplate theory, developed after more than 30 years of study by Dr. Walt Brown, explains, with overwhelming scientific evidence, earth's defining geological event - a worldwide flood. This book includes an index, extensive endnotes and references, technical notes, answers to 36 frequently asked questions on related topics, and hundreds of illustrations, most in full color.