This is one of those rare books – a conference publication that is full of pleasant surprises. The sub-title is the real indicator of the content of this book as the 16 chapters encompass multiple perspectives of the science of climate change and the value of soils; it is not a recipe book of how to manage soils in a changing climate. The early papers contain fascinating accounts of different views of soil ranging from the two predominant ethical views of soil (first, by virtue of its use in procuring or producing goods, e.g. food; and second, as a component in systems that encompass the process of valuation, e.g. a constituent of human personality or culture) to the pre-cursors of the current concepts of ecosystem services embodied in the work of Leopold. He wrote, ‘A healthy (soil) system had a complex structure with multiple channels of energy flow and hence the capacity for self-adjustment and revival following disturbance’ – an early exposition of the current pre-occupation with soil resilience. Given this complexity, it is perhaps not surprising that the later chapters describing the effects of global environmental changes, such as climate, atmospheric CO₂, soil organic carbon and biogeochemical cycles on soils and the biological processes that occur in them, are tentative in their conclusions. In summary, this is a thought-provoking publication, which reinforces the notion that soils confer real biophysical limits to the expansion of the market economy.