Earth is known as the Goldilocks Planet because it is ‘not too hot, not too cold and not too dry’ and so has consistently supported life for more than three billion years. University of Leicester geologists Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams show how Earth’s climate has continuously changed over its 4.5-billion-year history. They demonstrate how geologists are becoming ever more adept at reading the changes in the climate from the evidence left behind, despite some of it being puzzling and often contradictory. Zalasiewicz and Williams map the extreme changes in climate and explain the impact on plant and animal life and on the Earth’s physical appearance.