A Field Guide to the Wildlife of North America

First edition US paperback.

A Field Guide to the Wildlife of North America is a field guide of North American wildlife with a brief description and large full-color photograph of over 170 animals. It was written by Bryan Richard and published in 2006.

I bought this book, not just because it was on clearance and quite cheap, but also because of the beautiful photographs of each animal. I had leafed though it for years, but finally read it through cover-to-cover and finished on 2017-11-07.

Status

I own the flexibound version and have read it.

Review

Good

• Over all, the book is pretty great. It's a good read and fun just to flip through.
• The large photos of each animal are very useful and much better than a long description found in many less-visual guides.
• The descriptions are full of interesting trivia for each animal.
• The side notes include size and ways to distinguish the animal from similar looking species.
• The binomial nomenclature is included for each animal.

Bad

• The descriptions seem to only focus on the more interesting facts and are far from exhaustive. Sometimes they describe how the animal winters, sometimes not; sometimes they talk about reproduction, sometimes not. No doubt, it's a matter of space constraints, but I would gladly accept a smaller font size for more information.
• With fewer than 180 animals and a range of the entire continent, it's not very useful for the average hiker or explorer, but more of a home reference book. It would have been nice to see a book for each region or state.

Ugly

• Nothing.

Covers

• 

  The original cover focuses on three animal types, mammals, invertebrates, and birds. It's a bit dull for my taste, especially with the canary backdrop.

• 

  The flexibound spotlights the fox, but also has three foreground photos, all mammals. It doesn't do as good a job showing the span of the animals in the book, but it looks more professional.

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