This book gets my highest rating because it goes into much more than its title suggests.
It describes principles and processes that have gone on with the earth, not just other planets. It describes the earth's history, as well as lunar and mars history very clearly. From there the author contrasts the various worlds. The author explains positive and negative feedback and how and why climate change here on earth occurs. He describes the tenacity of microbial life to survive heat, cold, even being strapped to a rocket in space for two weeks and surviving scorching re-entry. he describes how life began on earth as the earth climate was evolving, how life on earth further changed climate, and how microbial life on mars might have evolved along those principles.

As in most science books there is extensive documentation, bot directly in the text and in "notes and references" at the end of each chapter.

There is a prolog, introduction, and epilog to further clarify the topics within the book, and draw the leader into the topics and then reinforce the processes and histories covered. Facts acquired from spacecraft are woven into the ideas and processes, and the scientific models of climate and impact histories of the various worlds all the way out to Pluto and beyond.

In the epilog the author describes how our knowledge of our own earth and of other worlds has increased in detail and distance outward from us. He contrasts geological time to the timespan of generations and of the human presence on earth very well in the epilog.

There is a well made index.

This book is a very prominent reference on both climate change processes and on the histories of the various planets and moons, global ecologies, and on the human impact to our own world. ( )