This book is really geared more toward the academic. I would not find it useful as a field guide, though it makes for fairly interesting biological reading. It is not laid out in a "field guide" fashion, with species listed and illustrations for each provided. It would be frustrating to take the kids to the beach at low tide and attempt to use this unless you are very well acquainted with your marine taxonomy. Most species are not identified by a common name, and the color plates and illustrations are not necessarily near the species text.
This book reads as a textbook for students rather than a useful tool for laymen who just need to know what critter they just found under a rock, and want the information before the tide comes back in.

Though published in the early 1980s, this book does a wonderful job of introducing the active naturalist to the nearshore marine life of the Pacific Northwest. This book includes good illustrations and photographs, descriptions of where marine flora and fauna live and what they do there. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to go the seashore of the Pacific Northwest and figure out what they are looking at. Kozloff has been there and seen everything he's writing about. I use this book as my primary text when I take students to Puget Sound, Washington, for my marine ecology field course. A top notch field guide!

This is a "must read" for anyone interested in the troubles in Northern Ireland. It's a collection of touching stories about Catholics, Protestants - IRA members to UDA members and their everyday dilemmas while living in this troubled region.

This is an excellent key for trained botanists (or very knowledgable amateurs) who want to identify the flora of the Blue Ridge Mountains of the southeast United States. However, it is not a book for the untrained, casual observer of wildflowers. The dichotomous key is easy to follow, though I wished the habitat descriptions were more detailed. The lack of illustrations is distressing -- sometimes a picture IS worth a thousand words! However, I appreciate that illustrations are expensive and would have increased the size of the book. It is easily carried in the field -- always a plus.

Good text and excellent range maps. Artwork is not very good. Taxonomy is out-dated, and common names are simply wrong. Authors continued to use the tongue-twisting academic (not common) names devised in the first half of the last century, instead of standardized common names in use nationwide since 1978. Publishers should have had the book reviewed by herpetologists of a younger generation. Only book available on Louisiana herps, so use it until a better one comes along.