The Encyclopedia of Animals: A Complete Visual Guide

by George McKay

Book Overview

The Encyclopedia of Animals is a lavishly illustrated, authoritative, and comprehensive exploration of the rich and intriguing world of animals. Written by an international team of specialists,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520244060
• Release Date: November 2004
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 608 Pages
• Weight: 5.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.5" x 1.6" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A reference must-have for elementary and beyond

What a fantastic tome, all five pounds of it. Pages are packed with illustrated information in full color. The kids beg to look over the book, and ask for more information from the highlights. In addition, they're learning geography, as each page shows a world map with the habitat range. Thirty years ago, a book of this caliber would have cost hundreds of dollars. Thank goodness that the world economy supports lower prices now.

Great book for artists

I bought this as a Christmas present an artist, and it is a perfect reference book for her work. Thousands of great color illustrations, with fascinating facts to go with them. Highly recommended.

For kids from 5 to 50

This is a detailed book on every kind of animal (small lizards to elephants, lots of birds.) With a lot of pictures and selective paraphrasing from a few captions, it would entertain a four-year-old, yet there's enough detail a high school kid could use it for term papers. Great bargain. Big, beautiful, dense book.

A superb introduction to life on Earth

Animals, birds, insects, fishes and reptiles have always fascinated people. This book provides as comprehensive a guide as it is reasonably possible to do on such a broad subject in a single book. There are plenty of photographs and drawings to support the text. All of it is well laid out and easy to read. The overview at the beginning of the book makes clear that the co-authors believe in Darwin's theory of evolution, acknowledging the alternative theory of creation but being somewhat dismissive of it. This overview also covers biology, habitat and endangered species as well as evolution. Anybody wishing to read it from cover to cover faces a daunting (albeit very enjoyable) prospect - however, the book is structured in such a way that you can dip into the book for the information you want and usually find it easily (though I wonder how many people would know to look for rabbits under their group name lagomorphs), with separate sections for each main category of creature and each section sub-divided appropriately. Understandably, the biggest main section is devoted to mammals. Here you will find six pages devoted to the dog family, ten to the cat family and three to horses and related species. Obviously, a book like this can never offer much more than an appreciation of the diversity of life on our planet, but in this it does an excellent job. The pictures should appeal to people of all ages including even small children, thus helping to interest them in the subject. The text is not too technical so all readers can expand their knowledge via this book. Of course, you can explore the natural world in greater detail by collecting books devoted to birds, butterflies, cats, dogs, horses, fishes or whatever appeals to you, but for such a wide-ranging book about animal life, this is as good as any I've seen.

A must-have for private or library zoology reference shelves

The editorial collaboration of George McKay, Fred Cooke, Stephen Hutchinson, Richard Vogt, and Hug Dingle, The Encyclopedia Of Animals: A Complete Visual Guide is an amazing scientific reference and "user friendly" resource for zoology students and non-specialist general readers. Full-color photographs and illustrations on every single page add a compelling touch to this amazing survey of virtually of the animal kingdom, featuring geographic distribution, habitat and feeding, distinctive traits, life cycle and more of all the myriad types of beasts known to man. The text is scientific and matter-of-fact in presenting information, yet written to be accessible to lay readers. Of especial note are the realistic artist's depictions of myriad species variations for different birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, etc. in order to render their different appearances crystal clear. An absolute "must-have" for private or library zoology reference shelves.