I just recently returned from the Galapagos Islands, and the book that guided me throughout my journey was this book by M.H. Jackson. Very easy to find the animal you are looking, and also helps to discover more creatures to look for. Helped explain things further from what the guides had said. Also helped me in answering many people's questions about different creatures. A Great book! A must for all travelers to the galapagos in search of unique wildlife.

I am a biologist that has been working in the Galapagos as a Naturalist leading tours there for the last 6 years. Michael Jackson's book is the "Bible" for the beginning naturalist and certainly more than adequate for the casual "ecotourist". Jackson covers all major aspects of the history, geology, ecology, and biology of the islands. In the "biology" section, he gives a clear, concise, but thorough group-by-group treatment of all major taxa including plants, reptiles, land and sea birds, mammals, and a brief section covering marine life. While there are other guidebooks available, none come close to the accuracy, clarity of presentation, and logical format of this book. Of particular usefulness are the many photos, tables, and graphs which provide a visual representation of many of the topics discussed and a synthesis of large amounts of data.

For those who love chimpanzees, MAHALE is the perfect photographic look into their lives. Most of the 160 pages consist of full-page, glossy photographs of chimps and their habitat, taken in the Mahale Mountains National Park in Tanzania. You'll see a contemplative young chimp dabbling his fingers in a mountain stream, five chimps arranged in a grooming line, a female lounging in her day nest, chimps feeding and hunting, nurturing, playing. Much of their social lives are captured within these pages. Perhaps unfortunately, the accompanying text, while well-written and interesting, is overshadowed by the first-rate photography. The text supplies insights into the lives studied here: diet, social behavior, self-medicating techniques, adaptive behavior, and much more. As with most books about chimpanzees, MAHALE has a foreword written by Jane Goodall.

I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in chimpanzees and other non-human primates.

To anyone who loves chimpanzees: This book is wonderful! The pictures are absolutely beautiful! There are even little bits and pieces about researching chimps in the wild. To anyone who doesn't already love chimps: Read this book and you will!

I took the time to review this book because I feel strongly that it contains excellent photographs which deserve a wider audience. Michael Smith is one of the best living photographers and a national treasure of the US. He is known well in the photographic community but remains fairly obscure outside this group. I recommend this book to anyone interested in excellent photography.

Michael A. Smith has traveled many miles photographing the land, the cities, and the people across America, and is possibly the greatest photographer of our time. Not only is his subject matter interesting, every picture in this publication reveals his mastery of seeing, composition, and print quality. An excellent book.

Since a child, moose have always amazed me. Turning to popular wildlife texts, however, I found that very few such books ever mentioned these magnificent deer. Finally a book has come along to fill this void.

Dr. Geist is a renown expert in cervid biology and conservation. His expertise regarding moose ecology in North America and Eurasia shines through every page of this book. He has the rare ability to combine personal experiences with potentially dry biology information to produce very readable prose. I truly enjoyed this text! The accompanying photos were also spectacular. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the moose.

Val Geist is world renown as the dean of behavioral ecologists (ethologists) of the hooved mammals (ungulates) of the northern hemisphere. Fritz Walther, an extraordinary ungulate ethologist in his own right, once described Geist as having a mind that combines the vastness of the Russian Steppe (Geist's natal homeland), with the meticulousness of Germany (where he spent his youth) and the audacity of North America (where he has spent his adulthood). Bull's eye.

I know of no wildlife biologist with greater depth of knowledge and creative insight, or greater courage and dedication in applying his knowledge to the challenge of real world conservation.

Coming full circle, Geist has finally writen an entire book devoted to the moose, an animal whose behavior he (like I) studied extensively during his youth.

We who have had the pleasure of reading his numerous other books and scientific papers know that each leads the reader on a rare and delightful intellectual journey of discovery. His insights are always fresh and vibrant, built on an extraordinarily wide knowledge of the literature combined with in depth firsthand knowledge. This book is no exception.

To any reader seriously interested in moose or just wildlife in general, this work is an extraordinary find.

THE SOUL OF THE WOLF : A Meditation on Wolves and Man. By Michael W. Fox. 131 pp. New York : Lyons & Burford, 1992 (1980). ISBN 1-55821-150-0 (pbk.)

A few years ago I read a whole shelf of books on animals - Animal Rights, Animal Theology, Animal Experimentation, Ranching and the Meat-Packing Industry, and books on individual animals such as elephants, whales, gorillas, chimpanzees, pigs, sea otters, hamsters, and so on. Although all of the books were extremely informative, and left me with a considerably heightened respect for the many wonderful qualities and powers of our animal kin, one book seemed somehow different and more inspiring than the others : Michael W. Fox's 'The Soul of the Wolf.'

Although all of the books are still sitting on my shelves, I never open them anymore. I don't even like to be reminded of them. They're just too depressing. For what all of them have in common is that they bring home forcefully the enormity of the crime that we daily and unconsciously perpetrate against animals all across the globe. Tens of millions of animals are daily tortured to death in laboratories dedicated to the worship of Mammon. Tens of millions of others are cruelly slaughtered to provide some of the unhealthiest food that humans have ever eaten.

In contrast to the average unthinking selfish denizen of the modern world, who tacitly agrees to the prevailing evil, and who seemingly couldn't care less about the sufferings of animals, Michael W. Fox comes over not merely as a concerned and compassionate figure, but as a truly saintly person.

He has lived with wolves. He has seen very deeply into their nature. He respects them as fellow creatures with whom we have many things in common, but who at the same time are vastly superior to us in many respects. And he has understood, of course, that they too have a soul.

His book is at one and the same time both inspiring and profoundly saddening. We are inspired by the marvel that is the wolf; we are sickened at modern man's treatment of this fellow creature.

In the Buddhist Prajnaparamita literature there is a wonderful verse:

"For all creatures, O Lord, desire happiness; all creatures desire happiness and are averse to suffering...."

Most of us, presumably, are aware of this, but if you read Fox you will also become aware that wolves too are every bit as deserving of happiness, if not moreso, as the humans who are involved in a cosmic crime, not only against wolves, but against the whole of nature, for wolves too have souls.

Michael Fox has an amazing and refreshing understanding of wolves and their world. Not your typical coldly scientific wolf biology book. I highly recommend this to anyone who has even a bit of an interest in wolves or canines in general.

The second edition came out in 2001 and although my previous review is listed here it refers to the first edition. Professor Reiss sent me a copy of the second edition and I browsed through it to see what has changed. Except for the words "Second Edition" in the upper left corner of the cover page the cover is the same as the original. A closer look through the text shows that there are substantial changes. The original text was 316 pages long with 35 references and a CD Rom on the back page. The new edition is 443 pages with 51 references and a CD Rom on the back page (this is version 3.0 of Xtremes).

The preface to the second edition tells you precisely what is added. There are 8 new contributing authors who are Stuart Coles , Jurg Husler, Daniel Dietrich, Dietnar Pfeifer, Humberto Vaquera, Jose Villasenor, Pieter van Gelder and Dan Lungu and apparently the two main authors will encourage more contributors for a third edition. The authors are very much interested in demonstrating applications of extreme value theory using their Xtremes software and generously invite others to join in.

The structure and theme of the book has not changed. Section I on modeling and analysis has replaced the section on robust statistics with a section called heavy and fat-tailed distributions. The sections are slightly longer in the second edition. Chapter 2 has an additional section called the auto-tail-dependence function.

Part II on inference for parametric models includes a whole new chapter on Poisson Processes (Chapter 7). In Part III on multivariate methods, Chapter 9 on multivariate maxima includes a new section on the Gumbel-McFadden Model and Chapter 10 a new section on bivariate peaks over a threshold.

Part IV on topics in Hydrology, Insurance and Finance is totally revised and consists of Chapters 11-14 in place of the original Chapters 9-11. The old Chapters 9 and 10 are now Chapters 12 and 13 respectively.

In Part V there are again five case studies but they are totally new ones with the new authors that are acknowledged in the preface.

In the appendix they have replaced the description of the XPL programming language with the StatPascal language.

The software XTREMES was introduced by Falk, Husler and Reiss in their 1994 book "Laws of Small Numbers: Extremes and Rare Events". That book was mainly theoretical and the software was in an MS-DOS version for PCs. This text was published in 1997. For this text they supply a Windows (3.1 , 95, NT) version on a CD ROM.

In this book the emphasis is on applications in insurance, finance, hydrology and other fields. The first 10 chapters develop the theory and teach the use of XTREMES presenting dialog boxes and descriptions. The text is divided into 5 parts. Part I deals with modeling and data analysis, part II covers statistical infrence for parametric models, in part III elements of multivariate analysis are introduced, part IV emphasizes the application areas and part V is a collection of case studies using XTREMES. There are five case studies. One presented by Reiss but other presented by notable researchers including Tai Hsing, Jurg Husler, Ana Ferreira, Edgar Kaufmann and Cornelia Hillgartner. The appendices provide additional details on XTREMES. This is a very unique text that is valuable to anyone interested in doing research or applications of extreme value theory. Includes coverage of the parametric bootstrap.

This book is a must have for any library on Appalachia or the Great Smoky Mountains. Michael Frome does an admirable job balancing sensitivity for the mountain people, their customs, attitudes, and anomalies with historical research and insightful commentary about the creation of the Park and its future. Being a native of the region, from a long line of Appalachian families, I felt that I understood my home more after reading this book than I ever would have otherwise. With equal nods to conservationists and tourists alike, this book will educate, entertain, and enlighten anyone who cares about this most beautiful and mysterious of regions. Additionally, Frome implores the reader to know the Park intimately, to abandon the car and strike out on foot, to rejoice fully with Mother Nature in Her playground. The addition of Strangers In High Places to your collection will be one of the best decisions to be made.

This book is a must for all who love the Smoky Mountains. In it you meet those players who made this magical place what it is today, including the wind and rain, early pioneers and geologists, loggers, whisky distillers, woodsmen and rangers. If you want to get beyond the slide shows and park brochures, read this book and learn what the Smokies are really all about.

Here are a few of the many reasons I keep reading everything Mike Messner writes:

1) He seems to take the feminist "personal is political" slogan to heart, revealing much more of himself and his own questions and vulnerabilities than most other male writers.

2) He uses both academic and journalistic techniques to research his topics and support his theses.

3) He lacks the arrogance of many experts, retaining an open mind as he delibertely attempts to look at things in original ways.

4) The topic of this book -- and several of his others -- continues to fascinate me. By looking at how we "do gender" in a sporting context, we come to understand so much about how and why any and all women and men behave as we do.

Highly recommended. -- Mariah Burton Nelson

USC Sociologist Michael Messner, who has spent the majority of his academic career studying issues of sport, masculinity, and power has written a truly significant book with Taking the Field: Women, Men, and Sports. The book finds a place for much of his previous research, as well as the research of other gender and sport scholars, to elicit the mechanisms in which gender is produced, reproduced, and contested in sport.

The premise of the book holds that gender is a product of structure, culture, and an individual's interactions within culture. This serves as the launching point for a deft discussion of the affects of sport in America. Messner has a talent for seeing the larger picture in seemingly "normal" events, and in Taking the Field he analyzes the affect that "normal" interactions in sport has on the subjugation of women and gay men, and the real and symbolic violence committed against both women and men by men.

Messner's work is important to scholars of both sport and gender, but is particularly important to gender scholars who too frequently fail to recognize the power sport, and sport media, has in shaping current gender relations, particularly the institutionalization of manhood. But Taking the Field is also highly recommend for anybody who has an interest in understanding the larger implications of American sport, beyond winning and losing. It is a must read for coaches, parents, and educators who have anything to do with sport.

To help us understand how theory hits the road, Messner highlights familiar news events such as the Columbine Massacre, or the 1999 Women's World Cup Championships, and analyzes them from a social-feminist perspective. In such he clearly elucidates the perils of the way we do sport in America and shows us that the concepts and theories he speaks of are not just found on the pages of books - that they are real, with real life application, and have a very real affect on people's lives.

Taking the Field is also important because it brings both homophobia and the mediea into the center of analysis. Whereas much attention has been given to the media's role in gender relations, I have been wholly discouraged by the absence of homophobia from much sport literature, and from sport in gender literature. Taking the Field shows the significance homophobia plays in sport, shaping and maintaining athletics as a masculine and heterosexual institution, and how important sport is in the production of gender

In the end Dr. Messner suggests that resistance to the system is possible (perhaps even inevitable). The masculinist center of sport has a soft underbelly and it is currently challenged by individual sports, female athleticism, the growing presence of gay male athleticism, and progressive individual men who are no longer willing to allow the system to function in a homophobic and misogynistic manner. But while these challenges to a hegemonic masculinity have threatened sport's ability to be openly sexist and homophobic, we must understand how sport attempts to reproduce itself covertly, so that we can continue to progress toward a culture of equality...

I received this book as a gift, and it's become a permanent fixture on our living room table. The photos are spectacular, as is writing by Ken Brower,a knowledgeable and highly respected environmental writer.
I grew up in the SF Bay Area, and it was uplifting to read about how Sam Sebastiani has restored the wetlands on his vineyard. I wish all of the wine growers in California were as responsible stewards of the land!

I would highly recommend this book - and it would make a great gift!

Proof that our heroes are all around us. Stunning photographs affirm that we can save this planet from ourselves. The results of one person's efforts are reproduced in a neat, coffee table format that shows how even a mere 100 acre marsh (a former hay field!) can be transformed into a life-sustaining ecosytem that supports a diverse number of species. As in many of Ansel Adams photographs that encompass the reflection of the small landscape within the larger one--Michael Sewell has illustrated the importance of the "small place" as an ecological bell-weather of the greater environment. He proves that determined individual efforts do pay off, and gives us hope for the future. Text by the Browers, Father & Son, heighten this moving, life-affirming experience. Inspiring!

Color is what this book is all about. Beautiful pictures follow well-written text that takes one through the different seasons (as expected) in Canada's oldest Park. A real treat!