Anything and everything you need to know about these great reptiles! Status, morphology, the rattle, bodily functions, behavior, population and ecology, food, reproduction, venom apparatus, envenomation and its effects, treatment and prevention of envenomation, control an utilization, enemies of rattlesnakes, Indians and rattlesnakes, post-Columbian knowledge of rattlesnakes, myths, folklore and tall stories.

I read this book in the mid 90's just for the heck of it, and found it to be wonderful. The style is neither dryly academic nor breathlessly tabloid, but just right. The text answers almost all possible questions about rattlesnake life, legends, myths, and taxonomy that one could think of. It is one of the few books I have read that could be used as either a reference or vacation book.

rattelsnakes are dangerus and they well strick' and rattel wheen they are in a bad place were auther pray come by. you will allso want to watch were you are wakeing on the ground. thank you evere much for your time. chris j coombes.

This slim book provides a very thorough and scholarly, yet slyly humorous, and beautifully written summary of what modern biological and behavioral scientists have discovered about the American Bison and how they live their lives. The author has distilled decades of his own and others' research into a concise yet engaging account of what it's really like to be a bison. I found it a joy to read and suspect that it's one of, if not the, best book ever written about these fascinating and important animals. If you've always been attracted to bison, have wanted to read one book telling the most about them, and are not daunted by wading through a little science clearly presented, then this is probably the book for you.

Most of us grew up with cats or dogs as animal companions. Those who lived on farms had animals of wider acquaintance. Dale F. Lott was the grandson of the superintendent of the National Bison Range in Western Montana, and his father worked on the range as well. He writes, "I first encountered bison not as symbols of the West, the squandering of a natural resource, or a conservation triumph. They were simply the animals I had seen most often when I was a young child - enthralling in and of themselves." He went on to get his doctorate in biology, studying the huge animals he had grown up with. In _American Bison: A Natural History_ (University of California Press), he sums up the basics of bison. Thirty years of teaching seem to have given him an admirable power of storytelling, and his book is not only good for encompassing all the necessary natural history of the species, but also for his expression of personal encounters and feelings for the beasts.

In every chapter, Lott describes with no slight awe how well tuned evolution made these animals for their world, a world which is no longer. The peculiar bison profile, for instance, the huge mound above the forelegs, the hanging head, and the skinny rump, equips them for quick motion around the front feet "on which they pirouette on the sod like a hockey player on ice". A bull has to be able to pivot and twist to protect his own flanks and to dig a horn into the flank of an opponent. He says of the surprisingly complicated system of rumination, by which bison carry around bacteria to break down grass for their future digestion, "It's so sophisticated that neither bison nor biologists would be likely to think of it, yet it was achieved by the perfectly purposeless, aimless, and automatic process of natural selection." Lott has spent a good deal of time in what is left of the wild, watching these animals, and he reports on the complicated negotiations and social systems they have developed. He has written not just of bison, but of the prairie itself, how it came to be, and how the bison, rather than just being predators of grass, kept the grass vibrant through the centuries before they were ranged in. Part of the story has to be that the grasslands are no longer home to bison, and that the paying grasses we put on them are taking away the soil the bison helped build up. Bison are in small herds, with a risk of inbreeding, or being domesticated, with a risk of losing their complex wild behavior.

The worrisome future of bison is not the theme of this book, though. Throughout Lott shows an engaging eagerness to describe anything he has seen in his prairie fieldwork. Cowbirds, for instance, used to be buffalo birds, roaming the plains with the bison and thus unable to stick around long enough to raise a family. They can now stick around non-roaming cows, which do a sufficient job of stirring up insects for them to eat, but they still don't raise their own families; they still deposit their eggs in the nests of some other species which gets tricked to raising cowbirds instead of real progeny. Prairie dog towns are favored by bison, as both animals like closely cropped grass. The bison wallow around and damage the tunnels, but they also "bring something to the party... Of course, buffalo chips don't produce a fertilizer as quickly as, say Miracle-Gro, so the bison are a little like a dinner guest bringing a bottle of wine so new it must be aged a few years to be palatable." Ferrets, wolves, and grizzlies wander through these pages, too. It is an evocative book, beautifully written, by someone who loves these magnificent and forlorn beasts and is obviously eager for the reader to get to know them, too.

I have NEVER had a more useful text in my office!! Gives a clear approach to common and often complex problems faced in outpatient and inpatient medicine. Includes topics such as thyroid nodule, hyponatremia (and other electrolyte abnormalities), elevated transaminases, fatigue, chronic diarrhea, constipation, solitary pulmonary nodule, mediastinal adenopathy, and really anything else you can think of!! I have never not been able to find what I needed quickly and easily. A must have for an busy office when you need to know what to do without all the peripheral talk!! I wish they had continue this series in Peds and OB/Gyn (there are old ones in these fields)as they were just as valuable!! An investment you won't regret. Great for residents!!

This inciteful look into the life of Punin is quite a page turner. From references to his affair with Akhmatova to reflections on the politics of the time, the diaries provide a rare chronicle of the early Soviet era. The tactful translation is smooth and easy to comprehend. Jennifer Greene Krupala is a very talented translator and does great justice to the diaries of Nikolay Punin; it is obvious that she has a deep understanding of the work and a strong command of the Russian language.

If not one of the best field mammalogists in the world today (and she most likely is), Emmons is certainly one of the best "field research" writers. Her style and descriptions are fantastic to read, neither too fluffy nor detached and uninteresting. She includes both the highlights and the unfortunate accidents of her field seasons, providing a reality and a "sense of being there" that's difficult to find in articles or other people's writing. I'm no treeshrew researcher, and probably never will be, but found Tupai to be a fascinating book and yet another model by Emmons on how to do quality field research.

THE VIEW FROM BALD HILL: THIRTY YEARS IN AN ARIZONA GRASSLAND, Carl E. Bock, and Jane H. Bock (University of California Press, Berkeley CA 94720, 196pp.): For about twenty-five years, Drs. Carl and Jane Bock (both of them professors at the University of Colorado) have spent their summers in research at the National Audubon Society's 7,800 acre Appleton-Whittell Research Ranch 60 miles southeast of Tucson. Originally part of the Babocomari Grant, the Research Ranch and the land surrounding it had been heavily grazed by cattle for many years until 1968, when the Appleton family, who owned it at the time, removed the cattle altogether and dedicated the Ranch as an environmental preserve and as a lab for ecological research. The Bocks arrived soon afterward. This very readable book relates what they have learned over the years about an arid grassy region left entirely alone to be its natural self. Their book tells an exciting story about an increasingly rare kind of landscape.

If you're an artist and like to draw and/or paint snakes like I do, I highly recommend this book. The photos are gorgeous references.

I found Snakes: The Evolution of Mystery in Nature informative; however, I wish it had been better organized. For example, it has a chapter on venomous snakes; a chapter on cobras, coral snakes, and their relatives; a chapter on seakraits and seasnakes; and a chapter on vipers, adders, and pitvipers. All these types of snakes (except maybe for some of the seasnakes) are poisonous. I hope I'm not sounding too presumptuous, like I'm interfering with the artistic process, but I would suggest that Harry Greene make venomous snakes a section in the book, with maybe some writings that cover all poisonous snakes and a picture or two of a snake striking or something, and put the other chapters in that section.

Mr. Greene also mentions certain snakes like the king cobra, but there are no pictures of them in this book! I really would have liked to see some.

Other than these things, I like Snakes.

This was the first time I ever ordered a book through 'Net and must say that Amazon's promised delivery period was bang on target. The book was in mint condition. Count me as very satisfied with the service. On with the review.

It was with much excitement as I unpacked the book, also another first as far as literature on snakes was concerned, and I have found it hard to put down ever since. The photos were excellent as well as the quality of the print. What "disappointed" me was the main focus on venomous species with almost perfunctory glimpses of non-venomous snakes. The author's fascination with venomous snakes is very evident and, in this respect, a wealth of information. However, if one's interests lies with non-venomous species, this book would be considered inadequate.

The above aside, I find this book to be most absorbing and lucid in its explanation of the various topics covered. I'd certainly recommend this book as a "must-have" for all avid herpers' libraries.

What I like about the book is that it is new, by an expert and wonderfully illustrated. What I don't like is that the book is heavily biased towards cladism and treatment of snake groups seems to be somewhat haphazard and poorly organised. Words like Uropeltidae do not occur in the index. Many groups are hard to find except using the genus rank and the accounts even for genera are sometimes scattered and the text is chatty though sometimes rambling. This is not an introduction to snakes and its target audience seems rather eclectic (beginners, experts or people inbetween?).

I am disappointed that traditional groupings and classifications have been totally ignored which makes this work hard to cross-reference against older works which do have those groups. The author does not propose his own system based on Linnean ranks or for that matter a well annotated cladogram (there is a rather abstract one at the front).

Undoubtedly informative, I feel that serpents and those interested in them have been descriptively let down, coming from an acknowledged expert. More warmth and better organisation could have helped as in the standard of such works as "Handbook of Birds of the World - Lynx Edicions".