This well-produced book with an attractive cover, showing Norman D. Newell in the badlands of southern Alberta and a Girtypecten (my favourite bivalve), includes papers presented at the International Symposium on the Paleobiology and Evolution of the Bivalvia, Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology. Drumheller, Alta., 1995. It starts with a pleasantly written introduction by Gould, describing Norman Newell, to whom the volume is dedicated, in the light of his personal contacts and summarizing the contents of the volume. Newell is not only well known for his early work on Late Palaeozoic pectinids and mytilids, but also for his work on the modern carbonate environments of the Bahamas and his magnificent monograph on the Permian reefs in the Texas Glass Mountains. Later he returned to systematic and evolutionary studies, together with Boyd, of particular bivalve lineages, such as the early trigonioids and pseudomonotids, and did outstanding work for the Bivalvia volumes of the ‘Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology’. The introduction is followed by a short preface on the book and the symposium by the editors Johnston & Haggart.