The author, Professor Mike Baillie, an expert in "dendrochronology" and palaeoecology from Queen's University, Belfast, provides a fascinating scientific  detective story. The story starts with the description of a collaborative  effort - over many decades - by scientists in several countries to develop  a complete record of world-wide, climate modulated, annual tree growth as  recorded in tree rings (dendrochronology), from the present back to several   thousand years BC. The author then notes several unusual patterns in these  records, separated by hundreds of years, which point to multi-year events  with very poor growing conditions. This sets up the principal story in the  Exodus to Arthur, as the author describes his efforts to explain these  anomalies. The Professor Baillie uses as evidence historical records left  by - among others - Irish, Mediterranean, Chinese and Mayan writers and  story-tellers, and archeological evidence including boats and trees  recovered from Irish bogs and well preserved building timbers from long  abandoned Anasazi pueblos in Utah. Attention is also given to those cases  in which some anomalies in tree ring records do not match well across great   distances, for example, between Europe and the American southwest.

EXODUS TO ARTHUR: Catastrophic Encounters with Comets By Mike Baillie. 272 Pages. 6x9 Paperback. Illustrated. References. Index.