By Peter W. Hochachka and George N. Somero Oxford University Press (2002) pp. 478. ISBN 0-19-511702-6 (hbk)/0-19-511703-4 (pbk)£62.50 (hbk)/£29.50 (pbk)
Peter Hochachka and George Somero have come together again to publish a tour de force that the comparative physiology/biochemistry community has been awaiting for years. Book I of Biochemical Adaptationappeared in 1974 and was a superb story. The field was young. The little data that existed were used to present ideas as to how organisms adapt to carbon dioxide, oxygen, water and solute, nitrogenous wastes, temperature, pressure and buoyancy. This book served as the bible for many comparative physiologists grasping for mechanisms to explain the diversity of adaptations, and a field was born. Finally, we understood the importance of biochemistry as it was put into a `real' organism perspective rather than the simple mammal—bacteria systems we were all taught!
Book II was published ten years later and relied upon...
