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Book review |
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This book successfully harmonizes the very broad experience of two highly experienced engineering geologists who have both focused for many years on issues related to mining. In addition to their technical expertise, both are blessed with considerable gifts for writing, as evident in the very lucid nature of the text. This book fills a gap in the pre-existing library, which hitherto could only be made good by the painstaking collection of individual papers from journals, or from pivotal industrial manuals such as the NCB Subsidence Engineers’ Handbook (which despite their widespread adoption are now almost impossible to acquire). For this act of collation alone the authors merit the gratitude of the technical community. They have also gone beyond this, by systematically furnishing every chapter of the book (save the introductory one) with two to three case histories, which illustrate the practical application of the theory presented in that chapter. This approach works admirably, drawing as it does on the authors’ own experiences, which give these case histories a voice of authority which is never achieved when case histories are cobbled together from the publications of others. Besides this highly practical side to the book, it is also based on impressive scholarship, with most major references on the relevant topics being listed in the references.
It is perhaps fair to say that the scope of the book is not entirely evident from its rather brief title. For instance, four chapters are devoted to detailed expositions on the various types of subsidence
