This 2001 book provides a comprehensive review of the origin and history of mantle plumes throughout geologic time. The book describes the exciting results of the last few years, and integrates an immense amount of material from the fields of geology, geophysics, and geochemistry that bear on mantle plumes. Included are chapters on hotspots and mantle upwelling, large igneous provinces (including examples from Mars and Venus), mantle plume generation and melting in plumes, plumes as tracers of mantle processes, plumes and continental growth, Archean mantle plumes, superplumes, mantle plume events in Earth history, and their effect on the atmosphere, oceans, and life. This book will be valuable as a textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in geophysics, geochemistry, and geology, and will also form a reference text for researchers in the Earth sciences from a variety of disciplines.