The Shark Chronicles: A Scientist Tracks the Consummate Predator.

JOHN A. MUSICK AND BEVERLY MCMILLAN

Last summer, shark attacks on people were regular, well-publicized, and worst-fears-confirming. Musick has traveled the seas of the world to study sharks and is one of the staunchest defenders of these much-maligned animals. He teams with his science-writer wife McMillan to report the history of the shark beginning 320 million years ago, as told by shark fossils in Bear Gulch Canyon, Mont. The authors similarly use other stories from elsewhere around the globe to fill out the sharks' story and potentially grim future. Musick and McMillan provide an accessible overview of sharks' amazing physiology and keen survival skills and explain how those factors have allowed the animals to thrive. Times, 2002, 242 p., hardcover, $26.00.