A.B. Beaudoin and M.J. Head, eds., 2004, The Geological Society of London, London, 368 p. (Hardcover, £85.00, ∼US $149.20) ISBN: 1-86239-160-2. The Palynology and Micropaleontology of Boundaries examines changes in microfossils that occur across stratigraphic boundaries, although the editors recognize that other kinds of boundaries could be of interest. The title is somewhat unfortunate because, in my view, micropaleontology includes all microscopic fossils, so palynology is a part of micropaleontology. The practice of paleontology is too fragmented for the discipline's own good, so we should be making more of an effort to put the pieces together. This volume, derived in part from a symposium at the Geological Association of Canada in 2002, contains four synthetic papers covering the nature of boundaries and microfossil records across them and 13 papers on specific boundary intervals. These include conodonts across Cambro–Ordovician, Ordovician–Silurian, and Permian boundaries; miospores in the Carboniferous boundary in Britain; forams or ostracodes across Jurassic; Cretaceous, and Paleogene boundaries; dinoflagellates across the Jurassic–Cretaceous, Cretaceous–Tertiary, Paleogene, and Paleogene– Neogene boundaries; pyritized diatoms across the Paleocene–Eocene; and comparison of multiple groups across the Turonian–Coniacian boundary in Europe and North America. While each paper has information for specialists in its group or stratigraphic interval, most readers want to know the context that makes them of interest to a wider audience. There are a number of questions that could be addressed: How can we better define the standards of geologic time we apply around the world? What is the pattern of fossils across a mass-extinction boundary? Is there a pattern of response of fossils to multiple mass-extinction boundaries? What are lateral changes in organisms associated with a stratigraphic boundary in one area? How can we correlate biostratigraphies across great distances? How do changes in lithofacies or sequence stratigraphy associated with a boundary affect the distribution …