As prior reviews state, the text is well-selected from Powell's journal, and the photographs are superb. But how can the author publish the journal of an explorer without a map keyed to the dates of journal entries? The photographs are superb, but again, not keyed to a map, or even associated with the text. The identifying data for each photo is listed in the front of the book, but is not given on, or near the photograph. A potentially superb book, but, because of these defects and faults, one that is maddening to read.

I think all books are good but can be better. This one I think is better but could be worse.

Excellent photographs, maps and text, but uses the tongue-twisting common names devised by academics in the first half of the last century. Common names for North American amphibians, turtles, reptiles and crocodilians have been standardized since 1978, and have generally been adopted nationwide. Unfortunately, this book will cause much confusion about name usage. The publisher should have had this book reviewed by herpetologists of a younger generation; they would have caught the out-dated common names, and saved the publisher some embarrassment.

This book and its sister volume are much too technical and verbose for the average hobbyist. The illustrations are poor black and white photographs and/or drawings that are not of much help in identifying cacti that most of us would encounter. The material also seems to be dated, and very, very limited in some areas of general interest, (schlumbergera, for example....) I have found these books to be of little help, and certainly not worth the price....

This is really a scientific work, but anyone with a knowlege of "Flora's" will find thier way around these books with ease. Although some of the nomenculture is outdated it is still a "Must" for the serious Cacti Species collector.

The processes that Mr. Fields espouses in this work derides the good job many teachers do in America's public schools. His Whiteheadian perspective of relativism in instructional technique is an agnostic diatribe of treating students as customers and teachers as the attendant behind the counter in a fast-food restaurant. His self-efficacy position chooses the view that the "student-customer" should get his/her educational burger "their way," and not through time-tested methodology and the natural creativity of the teacher. This book is a revision of the failed ideas that led to the idiocy of the open classroom. Fields should return to Woodstock and stop pushing this garbage off onto educators that are "in" the classroom.