"Ted Shoemaker"  wrote in message
>
> I am trying to find reliable information on human evolution.  It seems
> that every time I read a different book, scientific magazine, or
> internet page on the subject, the facts are a little different.  Very
> frustrating.
>
There isn't one cut and dried story. You can generally tell which books are
serious science (even if they are popularisations) and which are not,
because the non-serious books will quite overtly push some sort of religious
or ideological agenda.
>
> Alright, so neither you nor I were here 2 million years ago, and we
> have to reconstruct things the best we can.  Granted.  But is there
> really such a vast range of opinion on human evolution?  Today I
> discovered (on a webpage) two new species of humans I'd never
> heard of before: Robustus and Boisei.  I suspect that someone else
> will tell me that these two species didn't exist.
>
The fossils and the type specimens certainly exist. This is the
"lumper/spiltter" debate. There is no agreed definition of a
species through
time, since species are sexually incompatible with each other, but modern
humans are connected to fish through a whole series of sexually-compatible
ancestors.
>
> Where can I find an authoritative outline of the history of the human
> genus?  Or is it all up for grabs?
>
Try an encylopedia for a reasonable dispassionate overview. There are many
books on human evolution, but unfortunately I can't think of one that
doesn't express some opinion or other that is disputed by other people in
the field.
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