Superb coverage but some plates are inaccurate, 12 Nov 2008
Firstly the good points. The book covers the whole of Africa south of the Sahara including migrants. It weighs about a kilo but is still very useable as field guide. Its comprehensive coverage means it is the only real choice for somewhere like Zambia. The descriptions are brief but good enough and the distribution maps are fine. Illustrations of birds are by colour plates (far superior to photographs). The book is well laid out with the pages colour coded by species, importantly the text, distribution and plates are all next to each other for each bird.
After a couple of trips to Zambia I had made a few hand written notes in the book about accuracy of the colour plates. However, after a trip to Tanzania the number of comments I put in about inaccuracy increased significantly. Most plates are fine but there is a significant percentage that are not quite correct. Its not major things but details of the colours and tones. For example the most distiguishing feature of the greater blue eared starling is the prominent yellow eye, however, the plate shows this to be rather dull and not at all prominent. In Tanzania the guides were all using Fanshawe's East Africa guide and to be brutally honest, it is a far superior publication. I didn't notice any errors in the plates in Fanshawe's guide and also the number of plates per species is vastly increased (I recognise that this is not possible in a book covering a far larger area as it would be far too big).
So, if you want a single book to cover the whole of Africa or are going somewhere (eg Zambia) that is not covered by other guides then get this book. If you're going to East Africa then get Fanshawe's East Africa guide as its far superior. This book is good but it is let down by the accuracy of some plates.

A "must" for all ornithological travellers to Africa, 01 Dec 2003
While I fully agree with the previous reviewer as to the variable quality of some illustrations, I still give this monumental work five stars. The mere fact that we now have a book that depicts all the species within the vast area covered in a decent way deserves praise. This would hardly have been economically possible without the recourse to the illustrations from previous field guides. At any rate, the book gives the intended most welcome overview. For those areas with good regional field guides, it makes sense, of course, to concentrate on those books.
By necessity, the texts in the present book are very short; but they are informative. The range maps do not differentiate by season; there are brief infos in the text, however.

A major breakthrough, 31 Oct 2003
Bird watching in Africa as always been divided to 3 main regions; west, east and south. Consequently, our knowledge of birds in areas outside of these classic boundaries is much more basic. This book is the first time ever that a field guide is aiming for the whole region - from 20 deg N up to 200 nautical miles off the continent shores (including Socotra but not Madagascar, Seychelles and other Indian and Atlantic Ocean Islands). Thus, promoting a more ‘holistic’ view of the African Avifauna and showing species that are less likely to be found in the more traditional field guides.

Many of the plates have been taken from earlier publications (Birds of Southern Africa, Struik 2002 and Birds of Prey of Africa, Struik 1998); others were commissioned specially for this project. Generally, there is a feeling of browsing in one of the SA field guides but with a widen species list. The quality of the plates is always a matter of taste and as been said before, we the ‘birdwatchers’ are very hard to please! Like with other field guides, it is a very fragile balance between art and science and to catch a species ‘jizz’ is a very hard task indeed.
Most of the species have good illustrations that portray distinctive plumages, accurate and realistic and can easily meet the modern standards, some can almost ‘jump out’ from the pages - some Robins, Thrushes, Bulbuls and Canaries are just few examples for these. In some cases, diagnostic flight patterns are also displayed (Nightjars, Crakes, Ducks…). Still there are some that the illustrators did not manage catching the ‘jizz’ properly and missed out a good opportunity to improve earlier plates (some Swallows, Mousebirds, Larks, and Pipits can be examples for that).

With all that in mind, I still think that this book is an essential on each bird lover library. The ability to catch so many species in a compact layout and still stay relatively loyal for details is a major break through! Moreover, its continental scope is vital for the understanding of many conservation projects that are still to take action in the future in order to maintain this rich Avifauna region.

It takes a brave writer to tackle the truly Herculean task of describing The Variety of Life: The Meaning of Biodiversity with the astronomical numbers of organisms living today, let alone all those that have fallen by the wayside over the billions of years of life on Earth. No one is quite sure how many living species there are, but it is estimated to be somewhere between 10 and 100 million. Fortunately, since the days of the great Swedish naturalist Linnaeus, around 250 years ago, life has been grouped and classified into hierarchical schemes. As a result, it is possible to encompass this enormous variety of life by describing the relatively few groups into which it can be clustered. And, since the mid-19th century and the Darwin-Wallace theory of evolution by natural selection, classification has taken on an extra, evolutionary dimension.

Colin Tudge is a well-known British science writer, whose last book was Neanderthals, Bandits, and Farmers. With a training in whole animal biology and a self-proclaimed love for the natural-historical foray among our fellow creatures, he is well placed to attempt this survey. The first part (all of 90 pages) of this big book deals with the thorny problems of what Tudge rightly calls the craft and science of classification. Since the 1950s, the word cladistics has terrorised many traditional naturalists and biologists. But it is here to stay and Tudge provides a very welcome guide that will be invaluable to both lay people and students.

The bulk of the text, nearly 500 pages, forms part II and the descriptions of the main groups from the most primitive (alpha proteobacteria) prokaryotes to Eupatorium, a large group of 1800 or so species of plant, which includes the hemp agrimony, common in ditches...In between these two groups, at either end of the biological spectrum, lie all the more familiar bugs and beasts, including ourselves. Inevitably, given so many millions of organisms, difficult choices have to be made, some groups are only dealt with at phylum level (for example, brachiopods) while others are detailed down to family level (for example, primates). Some extinct groups, not surprisingly the dinosaurs, get a look in but not many overall. The short epilogue concerns conservation and is followed by a useful reference list of sources and an index. Altogether, the 600-odd pages are enlivened with a large number of excellent black and white drawings of individual organisms and diagrams illustrating evolutionary relationships. For all natural historians and anyone interested in biology the The Variety of Life is a must. --Douglas Palmer

Superb coverage but some plates are inaccurate, 12 Nov 2008
Firstly the good points. The book covers the whole of Africa south of the Sahara including migrants. It weighs about a kilo but is still very useable as field guide. Its comprehensive coverage means it is the only real choice for somewhere like Zambia. The descriptions are brief but good enough and the distribution maps are fine. Illustrations of birds are by colour plates (far superior to photographs). The book is well laid out with the pages colour coded by species, importantly the text, distribution and plates are all next to each other for each bird.
After a couple of trips to Zambia I had made a few hand written notes in the book about accuracy of the colour plates. However, after a trip to Tanzania the number of comments I put in about inaccuracy increased significantly. Most plates are fine but there is a significant percentage that are not quite correct. Its not major things but details of the colours and tones. For example the most distiguishing feature of the greater blue eared starling is the prominent yellow eye, however, the plate shows this to be rather dull and not at all prominent. In Tanzania the guides were all using Fanshawe's East Africa guide and to be brutally honest, it is a far superior publication. I didn't notice any errors in the plates in Fanshawe's guide and also the number of plates per species is vastly increased (I recognise that this is not possible in a book covering a far larger area as it would be far too big).
So, if you want a single book to cover the whole of Africa or are going somewhere (eg Zambia) that is not covered by other guides then get this book. If you're going to East Africa then get Fanshawe's East Africa guide as its far superior. This book is good but it is let down by the accuracy of some plates.

A "must" for all ornithological travellers to Africa, 01 Dec 2003
While I fully agree with the previous reviewer as to the variable quality of some illustrations, I still give this monumental work five stars. The mere fact that we now have a book that depicts all the species within the vast area covered in a decent way deserves praise. This would hardly have been economically possible without the recourse to the illustrations from previous field guides. At any rate, the book gives the intended most welcome overview. For those areas with good regional field guides, it makes sense, of course, to concentrate on those books.
By necessity, the texts in the present book are very short; but they are informative. The range maps do not differentiate by season; there are brief infos in the text, however.

A major breakthrough, 31 Oct 2003
Bird watching in Africa as always been divided to 3 main regions; west, east and south. Consequently, our knowledge of birds in areas outside of these classic boundaries is much more basic. This book is the first time ever that a field guide is aiming for the whole region - from 20 deg N up to 200 nautical miles off the continent shores (including Socotra but not Madagascar, Seychelles and other Indian and Atlantic Ocean Islands). Thus, promoting a more ‘holistic’ view of the African Avifauna and showing species that are less likely to be found in the more traditional field guides.

Many of the plates have been taken from earlier publications (Birds of Southern Africa, Struik 2002 and Birds of Prey of Africa, Struik 1998); others were commissioned specially for this project. Generally, there is a feeling of browsing in one of the SA field guides but with a widen species list. The quality of the plates is always a matter of taste and as been said before, we the ‘birdwatchers’ are very hard to please! Like with other field guides, it is a very fragile balance between art and science and to catch a species ‘jizz’ is a very hard task indeed.
Most of the species have good illustrations that portray distinctive plumages, accurate and realistic and can easily meet the modern standards, some can almost ‘jump out’ from the pages - some Robins, Thrushes, Bulbuls and Canaries are just few examples for these. In some cases, diagnostic flight patterns are also displayed (Nightjars, Crakes, Ducks…). Still there are some that the illustrators did not manage catching the ‘jizz’ properly and missed out a good opportunity to improve earlier plates (some Swallows, Mousebirds, Larks, and Pipits can be examples for that).

With all that in mind, I still think that this book is an essential on each bird lover library. The ability to catch so many species in a compact layout and still stay relatively loyal for details is a major break through! Moreover, its continental scope is vital for the understanding of many conservation projects that are still to take action in the future in order to maintain this rich Avifauna region.

In fiction this would be an epic!, 26 Mar 2004
An imposing book by a major science writer, Tudge rightly subtitles this work "a celebration." Although at first glance the book seems overwhelming, Tudge has broken down his feast of life into easily consumed portions. After an excellent overview of the history of classifying life, he allows the reader to choose among the many types of animals and plants. One can jump to insects, birds, fish or reptiles for more detailed evolutionary accounts and modern examples. Unable to resist, i skimmed over a few more esoteric examples to settle down to Primates and Hominids. This section provides a superb overview of current knowledge, distinguishing clearly what is known and what is supposed. This was familiar territory but delving in the other sections proved equally rewarding. However, this also suggests a warning that the book is not a "cover-to-cover" exercise.

Tudge opens with the problem facing many new students of biological sciences - how to deal with the immensity of information confronting them. There are, he notes, over two million species described already. No-one disputes the number is far below the actual total life contains - but what is the realistic total? Estimates range as high as 100 million - an almost inconceivable figure. He accepts the more likely total as around thirty million, recognizing that such numbers remain out of human ken. From this, he builds his case that classification systems are necessary. What's required is a classification method that anyone can grasp. He finds the solution in the idea proposed by German entomologist Willi Hennig - cladistics. This system arranges life by characteristics, avoiding confusing generalities and the arcane mysteries of genetics. As Tudge argues, cladistics has become fourth phase of classification systems, and the one likely to endure.

The "technical" sections of the book, covering the multitude of life forms each open with a descriptive essay followed by a "tree" of relationship among various species. This structure makes the book an excellent reference work and will keep it valuable for many years. The illustrations are designed to impart general information, not scientific detail. Neither are they simplistic as the supporting comment provides pointers to consider when viewing them. Tudge groups the text and graphics nicely, allowing visual and text comparison without constant page flipping.

As with any author confronting the immense cargo of information available in biology, Tudge was forced into a selective process in creating a bibliography. It's not an enviable task. The list appears sparse, a heavily pruned tree arranged by chapters. He indicates his preferred references, but only by using his sources will you discover whether more bountiful reading is listed in them. This lack in no way impairs the worth of this effort, however. There are countless book lists available. Anyone with an interest in life will treasure this volume.

Excellent as popular science and as a reference work, 23 Feb 2003
Soon after I bought this book, I studied systematics at college and was disappointed that in 5 or 6 weeks the teachers presented a highly flawed, inaccurate and uninteresting view of the field - even believing it to be a boring area of biology. Tudge makes it absolutely fascinating and if the reader perseveres with the first few chapters where he slowly and steadily build a fair technical understanding so that you will get past words like 'polyphyletic' without blinking. For me that is one mark of popular science - it is more than interesting - you learn something and afterwards could approach more technical books such as a few in the well ordered bibliography, with little fear. In short Tudge does something amazing; gives a portrait of every living thing on the planet. Viruses are excluded but in terms of cell based lifeforms it is a comprehensive overview. Even extinct creatures are included so that you will have a complete understanding of the separate dinosaur groups that gave rise to birds and which to mammals. The book is a tremendous achievement as accessible science and as an overview of all life.

An accessible, up-to-date overview of evolution, 11 Oct 2000
I have often been frustrated about the difficulty of getting hold of reliable information about the history of life on earth and the inter-relationships of living things. Now, my frustration is at an end. Colin Tudge has done the impossible, and synthesised the mountain of rapidly changing data about evolutionary history into a single, clearly written volume. The book is beautifully illustrated, and lucidly laid out, so that the reader can use it as a ready reference guide if he so wishes. But it can also be read at length, and the mine of information is rich indeed. The field of systematics is changing rapidly, but Tudge's book is unlikely to go out of date very quickly, as he is clear to indicate the areas where our current knowledge is most precarious. A must for all those interested in evolution.

Superb coverage but some plates are inaccurate, 12 Nov 2008
Firstly the good points. The book covers the whole of Africa south of the Sahara including migrants. It weighs about a kilo but is still very useable as field guide. Its comprehensive coverage means it is the only real choice for somewhere like Zambia. The descriptions are brief but good enough and the distribution maps are fine. Illustrations of birds are by colour plates (far superior to photographs). The book is well laid out with the pages colour coded by species, importantly the text, distribution and plates are all next to each other for each bird.
After a couple of trips to Zambia I had made a few hand written notes in the book about accuracy of the colour plates. However, after a trip to Tanzania the number of comments I put in about inaccuracy increased significantly. Most plates are fine but there is a significant percentage that are not quite correct. Its not major things but details of the colours and tones. For example the most distiguishing feature of the greater blue eared starling is the prominent yellow eye, however, the plate shows this to be rather dull and not at all prominent. In Tanzania the guides were all using Fanshawe's East Africa guide and to be brutally honest, it is a far superior publication. I didn't notice any errors in the plates in Fanshawe's guide and also the number of plates per species is vastly increased (I recognise that this is not possible in a book covering a far larger area as it would be far too big).
So, if you want a single book to cover the whole of Africa or are going somewhere (eg Zambia) that is not covered by other guides then get this book. If you're going to East Africa then get Fanshawe's East Africa guide as its far superior. This book is good but it is let down by the accuracy of some plates.

A "must" for all ornithological travellers to Africa, 01 Dec 2003
While I fully agree with the previous reviewer as to the variable quality of some illustrations, I still give this monumental work five stars. The mere fact that we now have a book that depicts all the species within the vast area covered in a decent way deserves praise. This would hardly have been economically possible without the recourse to the illustrations from previous field guides. At any rate, the book gives the intended most welcome overview. For those areas with good regional field guides, it makes sense, of course, to concentrate on those books.
By necessity, the texts in the present book are very short; but they are informative. The range maps do not differentiate by season; there are brief infos in the text, however.

A major breakthrough, 31 Oct 2003
Bird watching in Africa as always been divided to 3 main regions; west, east and south. Consequently, our knowledge of birds in areas outside of these classic boundaries is much more basic. This book is the first time ever that a field guide is aiming for the whole region - from 20 deg N up to 200 nautical miles off the continent shores (including Socotra but not Madagascar, Seychelles and other Indian and Atlantic Ocean Islands). Thus, promoting a more ‘holistic’ view of the African Avifauna and showing species that are less likely to be found in the more traditional field guides.

Many of the plates have been taken from earlier publications (Birds of Southern Africa, Struik 2002 and Birds of Prey of Africa, Struik 1998); others were commissioned specially for this project. Generally, there is a feeling of browsing in one of the SA field guides but with a widen species list. The quality of the plates is always a matter of taste and as been said before, we the ‘birdwatchers’ are very hard to please! Like with other field guides, it is a very fragile balance between art and science and to catch a species ‘jizz’ is a very hard task indeed.
Most of the species have good illustrations that portray distinctive plumages, accurate and realistic and can easily meet the modern standards, some can almost ‘jump out’ from the pages - some Robins, Thrushes, Bulbuls and Canaries are just few examples for these. In some cases, diagnostic flight patterns are also displayed (Nightjars, Crakes, Ducks…). Still there are some that the illustrators did not manage catching the ‘jizz’ properly and missed out a good opportunity to improve earlier plates (some Swallows, Mousebirds, Larks, and Pipits can be examples for that).

With all that in mind, I still think that this book is an essential on each bird lover library. The ability to catch so many species in a compact layout and still stay relatively loyal for details is a major break through! Moreover, its continental scope is vital for the understanding of many conservation projects that are still to take action in the future in order to maintain this rich Avifauna region.

In fiction this would be an epic!, 26 Mar 2004
An imposing book by a major science writer, Tudge rightly subtitles this work "a celebration." Although at first glance the book seems overwhelming, Tudge has broken down his feast of life into easily consumed portions. After an excellent overview of the history of classifying life, he allows the reader to choose among the many types of animals and plants. One can jump to insects, birds, fish or reptiles for more detailed evolutionary accounts and modern examples. Unable to resist, i skimmed over a few more esoteric examples to settle down to Primates and Hominids. This section provides a superb overview of current knowledge, distinguishing clearly what is known and what is supposed. This was familiar territory but delving in the other sections proved equally rewarding. However, this also suggests a warning that the book is not a "cover-to-cover" exercise.

Tudge opens with the problem facing many new students of biological sciences - how to deal with the immensity of information confronting them. There are, he notes, over two million species described already. No-one disputes the number is far below the actual total life contains - but what is the realistic total? Estimates range as high as 100 million - an almost inconceivable figure. He accepts the more likely total as around thirty million, recognizing that such numbers remain out of human ken. From this, he builds his case that classification systems are necessary. What's required is a classification method that anyone can grasp. He finds the solution in the idea proposed by German entomologist Willi Hennig - cladistics. This system arranges life by characteristics, avoiding confusing generalities and the arcane mysteries of genetics. As Tudge argues, cladistics has become fourth phase of classification systems, and the one likely to endure.

The "technical" sections of the book, covering the multitude of life forms each open with a descriptive essay followed by a "tree" of relationship among various species. This structure makes the book an excellent reference work and will keep it valuable for many years. The illustrations are designed to impart general information, not scientific detail. Neither are they simplistic as the supporting comment provides pointers to consider when viewing them. Tudge groups the text and graphics nicely, allowing visual and text comparison without constant page flipping.

As with any author confronting the immense cargo of information available in biology, Tudge was forced into a selective process in creating a bibliography. It's not an enviable task. The list appears sparse, a heavily pruned tree arranged by chapters. He indicates his preferred references, but only by using his sources will you discover whether more bountiful reading is listed in them. This lack in no way impairs the worth of this effort, however. There are countless book lists available. Anyone with an interest in life will treasure this volume.

Excellent as popular science and as a reference work, 23 Feb 2003
Soon after I bought this book, I studied systematics at college and was disappointed that in 5 or 6 weeks the teachers presented a highly flawed, inaccurate and uninteresting view of the field - even believing it to be a boring area of biology. Tudge makes it absolutely fascinating and if the reader perseveres with the first few chapters where he slowly and steadily build a fair technical understanding so that you will get past words like 'polyphyletic' without blinking. For me that is one mark of popular science - it is more than interesting - you learn something and afterwards could approach more technical books such as a few in the well ordered bibliography, with little fear. In short Tudge does something amazing; gives a portrait of every living thing on the planet. Viruses are excluded but in terms of cell based lifeforms it is a comprehensive overview. Even extinct creatures are included so that you will have a complete understanding of the separate dinosaur groups that gave rise to birds and which to mammals. The book is a tremendous achievement as accessible science and as an overview of all life.

An accessible, up-to-date overview of evolution, 11 Oct 2000
I have often been frustrated about the difficulty of getting hold of reliable information about the history of life on earth and the inter-relationships of living things. Now, my frustration is at an end. Colin Tudge has done the impossible, and synthesised the mountain of rapidly changing data about evolutionary history into a single, clearly written volume. The book is beautifully illustrated, and lucidly laid out, so that the reader can use it as a ready reference guide if he so wishes. But it can also be read at length, and the mine of information is rich indeed. The field of systematics is changing rapidly, but Tudge's book is unlikely to go out of date very quickly, as he is clear to indicate the areas where our current knowledge is most precarious. A must for all those interested in evolution.

Absolutely brilliant, 31 Dec 2007
Absolutely brilliant, if you are studying horticulture this book is a must, you will use it from cover to cover.

The Cambridge Illustrated Glossary of Botanical Terms, 06 Jun 2007
Excellent, clear diagrams with a comprehensive glossary for reference.

A concise invaluable study aid., 13 Mar 2002
I am currently studying Botany/Biology, I have found this book invaluable. The glossary is excellent for those who are studying the basics, or for those qualified in the field but require a refresher. There are a variety of illustrations, which really reduce the learning curve. For those who require more detailed information, expect to look elsewhere. My personal opinion is, this book is a major visual contribution to a subject that can be a little dry on occasion.

Superb coverage but some plates are inaccurate, 12 Nov 2008
Firstly the good points. The book covers the whole of Africa south of the Sahara including migrants. It weighs about a kilo but is still very useable as field guide. Its comprehensive coverage means it is the only real choice for somewhere like Zambia. The descriptions are brief but good enough and the distribution maps are fine. Illustrations of birds are by colour plates (far superior to photographs). The book is well laid out with the pages colour coded by species, importantly the text, distribution and plates are all next to each other for each bird.
After a couple of trips to Zambia I had made a few hand written notes in the book about accuracy of the colour plates. However, after a trip to Tanzania the number of comments I put in about inaccuracy increased significantly. Most plates are fine but there is a significant percentage that are not quite correct. Its not major things but details of the colours and tones. For example the most distiguishing feature of the greater blue eared starling is the prominent yellow eye, however, the plate shows this to be rather dull and not at all prominent. In Tanzania the guides were all using Fanshawe's East Africa guide and to be brutally honest, it is a far superior publication. I didn't notice any errors in the plates in Fanshawe's guide and also the number of plates per species is vastly increased (I recognise that this is not possible in a book covering a far larger area as it would be far too big).
So, if you want a single book to cover the whole of Africa or are going somewhere (eg Zambia) that is not covered by other guides then get this book. If you're going to East Africa then get Fanshawe's East Africa guide as its far superior. This book is good but it is let down by the accuracy of some plates.

A "must" for all ornithological travellers to Africa, 01 Dec 2003
While I fully agree with the previous reviewer as to the variable quality of some illustrations, I still give this monumental work five stars. The mere fact that we now have a book that depicts all the species within the vast area covered in a decent way deserves praise. This would hardly have been economically possible without the recourse to the illustrations from previous field guides. At any rate, the book gives the intended most welcome overview. For those areas with good regional field guides, it makes sense, of course, to concentrate on those books.
By necessity, the texts in the present book are very short; but they are informative. The range maps do not differentiate by season; there are brief infos in the text, however.

A major breakthrough, 31 Oct 2003
Bird watching in Africa as always been divided to 3 main regions; west, east and south. Consequently, our knowledge of birds in areas outside of these classic boundaries is much more basic. This book is the first time ever that a field guide is aiming for the whole region - from 20 deg N up to 200 nautical miles off the continent shores (including Socotra but not Madagascar, Seychelles and other Indian and Atlantic Ocean Islands). Thus, promoting a more ‘holistic’ view of the African Avifauna and showing species that are less likely to be found in the more traditional field guides.

Many of the plates have been taken from earlier publications (Birds of Southern Africa, Struik 2002 and Birds of Prey of Africa, Struik 1998); others were commissioned specially for this project. Generally, there is a feeling of browsing in one of the SA field guides but with a widen species list. The quality of the plates is always a matter of taste and as been said before, we the ‘birdwatchers’ are very hard to please! Like with other field guides, it is a very fragile balance between art and science and to catch a species ‘jizz’ is a very hard task indeed.
Most of the species have good illustrations that portray distinctive plumages, accurate and realistic and can easily meet the modern standards, some can almost ‘jump out’ from the pages - some Robins, Thrushes, Bulbuls and Canaries are just few examples for these. In some cases, diagnostic flight patterns are also displayed (Nightjars, Crakes, Ducks…). Still there are some that the illustrators did not manage catching the ‘jizz’ properly and missed out a good opportunity to improve earlier plates (some Swallows, Mousebirds, Larks, and Pipits can be examples for that).

With all that in mind, I still think that this book is an essential on each bird lover library. The ability to catch so many species in a compact layout and still stay relatively loyal for details is a major break through! Moreover, its continental scope is vital for the understanding of many conservation projects that are still to take action in the future in order to maintain this rich Avifauna region.

In fiction this would be an epic!, 26 Mar 2004
An imposing book by a major science writer, Tudge rightly subtitles this work "a celebration." Although at first glance the book seems overwhelming, Tudge has broken down his feast of life into easily consumed portions. After an excellent overview of the history of classifying life, he allows the reader to choose among the many types of animals and plants. One can jump to insects, birds, fish or reptiles for more detailed evolutionary accounts and modern examples. Unable to resist, i skimmed over a few more esoteric examples to settle down to Primates and Hominids. This section provides a superb overview of current knowledge, distinguishing clearly what is known and what is supposed. This was familiar territory but delving in the other sections proved equally rewarding. However, this also suggests a warning that the book is not a "cover-to-cover" exercise.

Tudge opens with the problem facing many new students of biological sciences - how to deal with the immensity of information confronting them. There are, he notes, over two million species described already. No-one disputes the number is far below the actual total life contains - but what is the realistic total? Estimates range as high as 100 million - an almost inconceivable figure. He accepts the more likely total as around thirty million, recognizing that such numbers remain out of human ken. From this, he builds his case that classification systems are necessary. What's required is a classification method that anyone can grasp. He finds the solution in the idea proposed by German entomologist Willi Hennig - cladistics. This system arranges life by characteristics, avoiding confusing generalities and the arcane mysteries of genetics. As Tudge argues, cladistics has become fourth phase of classification systems, and the one likely to endure.

The "technical" sections of the book, covering the multitude of life forms each open with a descriptive essay followed by a "tree" of relationship among various species. This structure makes the book an excellent reference work and will keep it valuable for many years. The illustrations are designed to impart general information, not scientific detail. Neither are they simplistic as the supporting comment provides pointers to consider when viewing them. Tudge groups the text and graphics nicely, allowing visual and text comparison without constant page flipping.

As with any author confronting the immense cargo of information available in biology, Tudge was forced into a selective process in creating a bibliography. It's not an enviable task. The list appears sparse, a heavily pruned tree arranged by chapters. He indicates his preferred references, but only by using his sources will you discover whether more bountiful reading is listed in them. This lack in no way impairs the worth of this effort, however. There are countless book lists available. Anyone with an interest in life will treasure this volume.

Excellent as popular science and as a reference work, 23 Feb 2003
Soon after I bought this book, I studied systematics at college and was disappointed that in 5 or 6 weeks the teachers presented a highly flawed, inaccurate and uninteresting view of the field - even believing it to be a boring area of biology. Tudge makes it absolutely fascinating and if the reader perseveres with the first few chapters where he slowly and steadily build a fair technical understanding so that you will get past words like 'polyphyletic' without blinking. For me that is one mark of popular science - it is more than interesting - you learn something and afterwards could approach more technical books such as a few in the well ordered bibliography, with little fear. In short Tudge does something amazing; gives a portrait of every living thing on the planet. Viruses are excluded but in terms of cell based lifeforms it is a comprehensive overview. Even extinct creatures are included so that you will have a complete understanding of the separate dinosaur groups that gave rise to birds and which to mammals. The book is a tremendous achievement as accessible science and as an overview of all life.

An accessible, up-to-date overview of evolution, 11 Oct 2000
I have often been frustrated about the difficulty of getting hold of reliable information about the history of life on earth and the inter-relationships of living things. Now, my frustration is at an end. Colin Tudge has done the impossible, and synthesised the mountain of rapidly changing data about evolutionary history into a single, clearly written volume. The book is beautifully illustrated, and lucidly laid out, so that the reader can use it as a ready reference guide if he so wishes. But it can also be read at length, and the mine of information is rich indeed. The field of systematics is changing rapidly, but Tudge's book is unlikely to go out of date very quickly, as he is clear to indicate the areas where our current knowledge is most precarious. A must for all those interested in evolution.

Absolutely brilliant, 31 Dec 2007
Absolutely brilliant, if you are studying horticulture this book is a must, you will use it from cover to cover.

The Cambridge Illustrated Glossary of Botanical Terms, 06 Jun 2007
Excellent, clear diagrams with a comprehensive glossary for reference.

A concise invaluable study aid., 13 Mar 2002
I am currently studying Botany/Biology, I have found this book invaluable. The glossary is excellent for those who are studying the basics, or for those qualified in the field but require a refresher. There are a variety of illustrations, which really reduce the learning curve. For those who require more detailed information, expect to look elsewhere. My personal opinion is, this book is a major visual contribution to a subject that can be a little dry on occasion.

Falls between two camps., 12 Apr 2005
This update of Deni Browns existing work on Aroids is a book that it's easy to read and enjoy - full of enthusiasm and an obvious love of the subject - but not so easy to use, in any practical sense of the word.

There are lots of plants listed, (although by no means a compehensive list of aroids) but relatively little information about their behaviour or needs in cultivation. The photogpahs are very fine, but not numerous to create a coffee-table type book that one could browse through for the beauty of the plants alone.

To be fair "Aroids" is not designed as a growers guide, nor as a botanical monograph, but it's not really clear who else it could be aimed at either.

Personally I've not returned to the book since I read through it the first time.

For centuries biological scientists have been using the Linnean system of classification, organising hierarchies of life forms by their perceived similarities and differences. In the late 20th century, some scientists started using an alternative system called "cladistics", which bases taxonomic classifications on ecological relationships. Under the first system, all algae fall into a single large category, which is then subdivided into various genera and species; under the second, green algae are grouped with plants, chromophyte algae with waterborne fungi, and so forth to account for the environments in which they live. Under the first system, dogs and wolves and coyotes are separated; under the second, they are united, for, the thinking goes, similarities of behaviour and provenience are more important than mere lines of evolutionary descent, which can only be guessed at.

The debate over cladistics has largely been confined to seminar rooms and laboratories. Henry Gee brings it to the general public in this spirited look at how the science of palaeontology, that grand tour of what Gee calls Deep Time, is conducted. Replacing old family trees with "cladograms", Gee challenges long-accepted notions about the past (for example, the classification of Archaeopteryx, which walks like a duck and quacks like a duck but is accounted for as a dinosaur) and argues for a return to rigour in testing hypotheses. His book, although about difficult issues, is immediately accessible, and readers seeking to learn something about cladistics--which Gee believes is "a revolution in thought as profound as that of Darwinian evolution by natural selection"--are off to a fine start in these pages. --Gregory McNamee

Superb coverage but some plates are inaccurate, 12 Nov 2008
Firstly the good points. The book covers the whole of Africa south of the Sahara including migrants. It weighs about a kilo but is still very useable as field guide. Its comprehensive coverage means it is the only real choice for somewhere like Zambia. The descriptions are brief but good enough and the distribution maps are fine. Illustrations of birds are by colour plates (far superior to photographs). The book is well laid out with the pages colour coded by species, importantly the text, distribution and plates are all next to each other for each bird.
After a couple of trips to Zambia I had made a few hand written notes in the book about accuracy of the colour plates. However, after a trip to Tanzania the number of comments I put in about inaccuracy increased significantly. Most plates are fine but there is a significant percentage that are not quite correct. Its not major things but details of the colours and tones. For example the most distiguishing feature of the greater blue eared starling is the prominent yellow eye, however, the plate shows this to be rather dull and not at all prominent. In Tanzania the guides were all using Fanshawe's East Africa guide and to be brutally honest, it is a far superior publication. I didn't notice any errors in the plates in Fanshawe's guide and also the number of plates per species is vastly increased (I recognise that this is not possible in a book covering a far larger area as it would be far too big).
So, if you want a single book to cover the whole of Africa or are going somewhere (eg Zambia) that is not covered by other guides then get this book. If you're going to East Africa then get Fanshawe's East Africa guide as its far superior. This book is good but it is let down by the accuracy of some plates.

A "must" for all ornithological travellers to Africa, 01 Dec 2003
While I fully agree with the previous reviewer as to the variable quality of some illustrations, I still give this monumental work five stars. The mere fact that we now have a book that depicts all the species within the vast area covered in a decent way deserves praise. This would hardly have been economically possible without the recourse to the illustrations from previous field guides. At any rate, the book gives the intended most welcome overview. For those areas with good regional field guides, it makes sense, of course, to concentrate on those books.
By necessity, the texts in the present book are very short; but they are informative. The range maps do not differentiate by season; there are brief infos in the text, however.

A major breakthrough, 31 Oct 2003
Bird watching in Africa as always been divided to 3 main regions; west, east and south. Consequently, our knowledge of birds in areas outside of these classic boundaries is much more basic. This book is the first time ever that a field guide is aiming for the whole region - from 20 deg N up to 200 nautical miles off the continent shores (including Socotra but not Madagascar, Seychelles and other Indian and Atlantic Ocean Islands). Thus, promoting a more ‘holistic’ view of the African Avifauna and showing species that are less likely to be found in the more traditional field guides.

Many of the plates have been taken from earlier publications (Birds of Southern Africa, Struik 2002 and Birds of Prey of Africa, Struik 1998); others were commissioned specially for this project. Generally, there is a feeling of browsing in one of the SA field guides but with a widen species list. The quality of the plates is always a matter of taste and as been said before, we the ‘birdwatchers’ are very hard to please! Like with other field guides, it is a very fragile balance between art and science and to catch a species ‘jizz’ is a very hard task indeed.
Most of the species have good illustrations that portray distinctive plumages, accurate and realistic and can easily meet the modern standards, some can almost ‘jump out’ from the pages - some Robins, Thrushes, Bulbuls and Canaries are just few examples for these. In some cases, diagnostic flight patterns are also displayed (Nightjars, Crakes, Ducks…). Still there are some that the illustrators did not manage catching the ‘jizz’ properly and missed out a good opportunity to improve earlier plates (some Swallows, Mousebirds, Larks, and Pipits can be examples for that).

With all that in mind, I still think that this book is an essential on each bird lover library. The ability to catch so many species in a compact layout and still stay relatively loyal for details is a major break through! Moreover, its continental scope is vital for the understanding of many conservation projects that are still to take action in the future in order to maintain this rich Avifauna region.

In fiction this would be an epic!, 26 Mar 2004
An imposing book by a major science writer, Tudge rightly subtitles this work "a celebration." Although at first glance the book seems overwhelming, Tudge has broken down his feast of life into easily consumed portions. After an excellent overview of the history of classifying life, he allows the reader to choose among the many types of animals and plants. One can jump to insects, birds, fish or reptiles for more detailed evolutionary accounts and modern examples. Unable to resist, i skimmed over a few more esoteric examples to settle down to Primates and Hominids. This section provides a superb overview of current knowledge, distinguishing clearly what is known and what is supposed. This was familiar territory but delving in the other sections proved equally rewarding. However, this also suggests a warning that the book is not a "cover-to-cover" exercise.

Tudge opens with the problem facing many new students of biological sciences - how to deal with the immensity of information confronting them. There are, he notes, over two million species described already. No-one disputes the number is far below the actual total life contains - but what is the realistic total? Estimates range as high as 100 million - an almost inconceivable figure. He accepts the more likely total as around thirty million, recognizing that such numbers remain out of human ken. From this, he builds his case that classification systems are necessary. What's required is a classification method that anyone can grasp. He finds the solution in the idea proposed by German entomologist Willi Hennig - cladistics. This system arranges life by characteristics, avoiding confusing generalities and the arcane mysteries of genetics. As Tudge argues, cladistics has become fourth phase of classification systems, and the one likely to endure.

The "technical" sections of the book, covering the multitude of life forms each open with a descriptive essay followed by a "tree" of relationship among various species. This structure makes the book an excellent reference work and will keep it valuable for many years. The illustrations are designed to impart general information, not scientific detail. Neither are they simplistic as the supporting comment provides pointers to consider when viewing them. Tudge groups the text and graphics nicely, allowing visual and text comparison without constant page flipping.

As with any author confronting the immense cargo of information available in biology, Tudge was forced into a selective process in creating a bibliography. It's not an enviable task. The list appears sparse, a heavily pruned tree arranged by chapters. He indicates his preferred references, but only by using his sources will you discover whether more bountiful reading is listed in them. This lack in no way impairs the worth of this effort, however. There are countless book lists available. Anyone with an interest in life will treasure this volume.

Excellent as popular science and as a reference work, 23 Feb 2003
Soon after I bought this book, I studied systematics at college and was disappointed that in 5 or 6 weeks the teachers presented a highly flawed, inaccurate and uninteresting view of the field - even believing it to be a boring area of biology. Tudge makes it absolutely fascinating and if the reader perseveres with the first few chapters where he slowly and steadily build a fair technical understanding so that you will get past words like 'polyphyletic' without blinking. For me that is one mark of popular science - it is more than interesting - you learn something and afterwards could approach more technical books such as a few in the well ordered bibliography, with little fear. In short Tudge does something amazing; gives a portrait of every living thing on the planet. Viruses are excluded but in terms of cell based lifeforms it is a comprehensive overview. Even extinct creatures are included so that you will have a complete understanding of the separate dinosaur groups that gave rise to birds and which to mammals. The book is a tremendous achievement as accessible science and as an overview of all life.

An accessible, up-to-date overview of evolution, 11 Oct 2000
I have often been frustrated about the difficulty of getting hold of reliable information about the history of life on earth and the inter-relationships of living things. Now, my frustration is at an end. Colin Tudge has done the impossible, and synthesised the mountain of rapidly changing data about evolutionary history into a single, clearly written volume. The book is beautifully illustrated, and lucidly laid out, so that the reader can use it as a ready reference guide if he so wishes. But it can also be read at length, and the mine of information is rich indeed. The field of systematics is changing rapidly, but Tudge's book is unlikely to go out of date very quickly, as he is clear to indicate the areas where our current knowledge is most precarious. A must for all those interested in evolution.

Absolutely brilliant, 31 Dec 2007
Absolutely brilliant, if you are studying horticulture this book is a must, you will use it from cover to cover.

The Cambridge Illustrated Glossary of Botanical Terms, 06 Jun 2007
Excellent, clear diagrams with a comprehensive glossary for reference.

A concise invaluable study aid., 13 Mar 2002
I am currently studying Botany/Biology, I have found this book invaluable. The glossary is excellent for those who are studying the basics, or for those qualified in the field but require a refresher. There are a variety of illustrations, which really reduce the learning curve. For those who require more detailed information, expect to look elsewhere. My personal opinion is, this book is a major visual contribution to a subject that can be a little dry on occasion.

Falls between two camps., 12 Apr 2005
This update of Deni Browns existing work on Aroids is a book that it's easy to read and enjoy - full of enthusiasm and an obvious love of the subject - but not so easy to use, in any practical sense of the word.

There are lots of plants listed, (although by no means a compehensive list of aroids) but relatively little information about their behaviour or needs in cultivation. The photogpahs are very fine, but not numerous to create a coffee-table type book that one could browse through for the beauty of the plants alone.

To be fair "Aroids" is not designed as a growers guide, nor as a botanical monograph, but it's not really clear who else it could be aimed at either.

Personally I've not returned to the book since I read through it the first time.

Should be required reading for would-be scientists, 28 Jun 2008
A little slow to get going - you think that Gee might have been attending a few too many Creative Writing courses. (Why do popular science authors think that every miniscule detail of their field trips is fascinating or relevant to the science?) It's worth the wait however, as this is a very clear explanation for the average person of the aims of cladistics, with some detailed discussions as applied to the fish/tetrapod relationship, birds/dinosaurs, and the hominids.

Gee reminds us that a scientific hypothesis should be testable, a precept virtually forgotten by today's disingenuous science in which total conjecture is always being handed down to us as incontrovertible fact. Contrary to the long-standing viewpoint of palaeontologists and evolutionary biologists, cladistics argues that any temporal or causal link between any fossil and any other fossil or any living species simply cannot be proven - they are after all dead and gone; the best we can do is create bifurcating "cladograms" indicating some sort of inferred relationship, without any temporal axis.

Some of the discussion of birds contained herein may well require a rewrite with the recent exposure of some Chinese bird fossils as fakes. Also, a picture is worth a thousand words, and a book like this really ought to contain some pictures of fossils and anatomical drawings to explain the points made in the text - there are none at all.

Despite such faults, this book should be required reading for anyone intending to embark upon a scientific career - this is what science should be about. Let's get back to our scientific roots.

Lost in Deep Time, 13 Apr 2000
Henry Gee's "Deep Time" is, if you will excuse the pun, a most timely book. Over the past ten years or so we have been treated to an increasingly rich diet of 'evolutionary' explanations for almost every conceivable human physical and psychological attribute on the basis of a highly speculative and scientifically untenable interpretation of the role of genes, inspired to a large extent by what biology professor Brian Goodwin termed the "absurd and degenerate concept" of the so-called 'selfish gene'.

If, as Henry Gee states, most professional palaeontologists "rejected the story-telling mode of evolutionary history as unscientific more than 30 years ago', then the appearance of a book about cladistics - the subject of "Deep Time" - is long overdue. Cladistics is the science of relationships based on verifiable attributes, as gleaned from comparative anatomy, physiology and embryology, from palaeontology and recently also from the comparison of gene sequences in plants and animals.

Such studies, in the view of cladists such as Gee, lead only to patterns of kinship - degrees of closeness of relationship based on observable features of structure and form. Any interpretation or extrapolation of such data to generate evolutionary lineages - lines of descent - is unscientific and therefore invalid. Such narratives of human or animal evolution are just that - stories invented to satisfy subjective prejudices about our place in nature, in particular about the presumed inevitable upward progression of evolution. "Deep Time", the 4.5 billion-year history of the Earth, and the extraordinary sparsity of the fossil record allow no valid conclusions to be drawn about how or why evolution occurred.

Cladistics claims to be an objective scientific method primarily on the basis that it is testable. Yet Gee admits that the test applied by cladists - Occam's Razor or the Principle of Parsimony - is unreliable and can never reveal the truth, which Gee says is unknowable. We are therefore left hanging in the void. We are told that 'almost everything we have been told about evolution is wrong', that we must abandon the stories of a progressive evolutionary process leading to Man, but we are given instead a scientific method which has nothing to say about the 'how' or 'why' of evolution and which is in any case apparently unreliable.

There is a further paradox. If the objective facts studied by cladists can say nothing about the how or why, then they can neither confirm nor deny Darwin's theory. Gee seems strangely ambivalent about this, at times acceping the lack of proof for Darwinism, at others using the assumption of the fact of natural selection to make his case e.g. when he simply asserts that evolution (because it is Darwinian) can have no direction or purpose.

Cladistics should nonetheless be welcomed. It has potential - if objectively pursued - to cut through the pseudo-science which currently bedevils evolution theory. It can help us towards a clearer view of our place in nature - but only if it is genuinely open to ALL the facts.

There is a kind of sub-plot to "Deep Time", in which Gee joins those who feel the need to knock humans off any kind of imagined pedestal, to reduce us to an insignificant accident of cosmic history. Bipedality, the manufacture and use of tools, language, intelligence, creativity and self-consciousness are all dismised as 'really not very special'. One has to ask if this is an objective assessment of the facts, unprejudiced by personal preferences and why it is that Gee fails to mention those facts of comparative embryology and anatomy which tell a very different story of evolution from the Darwinian one.

Superb coverage but some plates are inaccurate, 12 Nov 2008
Firstly the good points. The book covers the whole of Africa south of the Sahara including migrants. It weighs about a kilo but is still very useable as field guide. Its comprehensive coverage means it is the only real choice for somewhere like Zambia. The descriptions are brief but good enough and the distribution maps are fine. Illustrations of birds are by colour plates (far superior to photographs). The book is well laid out with the pages colour coded by species, importantly the text, distribution and plates are all next to each other for each bird.
After a couple of trips to Zambia I had made a few hand written notes in the book about accuracy of the colour plates. However, after a trip to Tanzania the number of comments I put in about inaccuracy increased significantly. Most plates are fine but there is a significant percentage that are not quite correct. Its not major things but details of the colours and tones. For example the most distiguishing feature of the greater blue eared starling is the prominent yellow eye, however, the plate shows this to be rather dull and not at all prominent. In Tanzania the guides were all using Fanshawe's East Africa guide and to be brutally honest, it is a far superior publication. I didn't notice any errors in the plates in Fanshawe's guide and also the number of plates per species is vastly increased (I recognise that this is not possible in a book covering a far larger area as it would be far too big).
So, if you want a single book to cover the whole of Africa or are going somewhere (eg Zambia) that is not covered by other guides then get this book. If you're going to East Africa then get Fanshawe's East Africa guide as its far superior. This book is good but it is let down by the accuracy of some plates.

A "must" for all ornithological travellers to Africa, 01 Dec 2003
While I fully agree with the previous reviewer as to the variable quality of some illustrations, I still give this monumental work five stars. The mere fact that we now have a book that depicts all the species within the vast area covered in a decent way deserves praise. This would hardly have been economically possible without the recourse to the illustrations from previous field guides. At any rate, the book gives the intended most welcome overview. For those areas with good regional field guides, it makes sense, of course, to concentrate on those books.
By necessity, the texts in the present book are very short; but they are informative. The range maps do not differentiate by season; there are brief infos in the text, however.

A major breakthrough, 31 Oct 2003
Bird watching in Africa as always been divided to 3 main regions; west, east and south. Consequently, our knowledge of birds in areas outside of these classic boundaries is much more basic. This book is the first time ever that a field guide is aiming for the whole region - from 20 deg N up to 200 nautical miles off the continent shores (including Socotra but not Madagascar, Seychelles and other Indian and Atlantic Ocean Islands). Thus, promoting a more ‘holistic’ view of the African Avifauna and showing species that are less likely to be found in the more traditional field guides.

Many of the plates have been taken from earlier publications (Birds of Southern Africa, Struik 2002 and Birds of Prey of Africa, Struik 1998); others were commissioned specially for this project. Generally, there is a feeling of browsing in one of the SA field guides but with a widen species list. The quality of the plates is always a matter of taste and as been said before, we the ‘birdwatchers’ are very hard to please! Like with other field guides, it is a very fragile balance between art and science and to catch a species ‘jizz’ is a very hard task indeed.
Most of the species have good illustrations that portray distinctive plumages, accurate and realistic and can easily meet the modern standards, some can almost ‘jump out’ from the pages - some Robins, Thrushes, Bulbuls and Canaries are just few examples for these. In some cases, diagnostic flight patterns are also displayed (Nightjars, Crakes, Ducks…). Still there are some that the illustrators did not manage catching the ‘jizz’ properly and missed out a good opportunity to improve earlier plates (some Swallows, Mousebirds, Larks, and Pipits can be examples for that).

With all that in mind, I still think that this book is an essential on each bird lover library. The ability to catch so many species in a compact layout and still stay relatively loyal for details is a major break through! Moreover, its continental scope is vital for the understanding of many conservation projects that are still to take action in the future in order to maintain this rich Avifauna region.

In fiction this would be an epic!, 26 Mar 2004
An imposing book by a major science writer, Tudge rightly subtitles this work "a celebration." Although at first glance the book seems overwhelming, Tudge has broken down his feast of life into easily consumed portions. After an excellent overview of the history of classifying life, he allows the reader to choose among the many types of animals and plants. One can jump to insects, birds, fish or reptiles for more detailed evolutionary accounts and modern examples. Unable to resist, i skimmed over a few more esoteric examples to settle down to Primates and Hominids. This section provides a superb overview of current knowledge, distinguishing clearly what is known and what is supposed. This was familiar territory but delving in the other sections proved equally rewarding. However, this also suggests a warning that the book is not a "cover-to-cover" exercise.

Tudge opens with the problem facing many new students of biological sciences - how to deal with the immensity of information confronting them. There are, he notes, over two million species described already. No-one disputes the number is far below the actual total life contains - but what is the realistic total? Estimates range as high as 100 million - an almost inconceivable figure. He accepts the more likely total as around thirty million, recognizing that such numbers remain out of human ken. From this, he builds his case that classification systems are necessary. What's required is a classification method that anyone can grasp. He finds the solution in the idea proposed by German entomologist Willi Hennig - cladistics. This system arranges life by characteristics, avoiding confusing generalities and the arcane mysteries of genetics. As Tudge argues, cladistics has become fourth phase of classification systems, and the one likely to endure.

The "technical" sections of the book, covering the multitude of life forms each open with a descriptive essay followed by a "tree" of relationship among various species. This structure makes the book an excellent reference work and will keep it valuable for many years. The illustrations are designed to impart general information, not scientific detail. Neither are they simplistic as the supporting comment provides pointers to consider when viewing them. Tudge groups the text and graphics nicely, allowing visual and text comparison without constant page flipping.

As with any author confronting the immense cargo of information available in biology, Tudge was forced into a selective process in creating a bibliography. It's not an enviable task. The list appears sparse, a heavily pruned tree arranged by chapters. He indicates his preferred references, but only by using his sources will you discover whether more bountiful reading is listed in them. This lack in no way impairs the worth of this effort, however. There are countless book lists available. Anyone with an interest in life will treasure this volume.

Excellent as popular science and as a reference work, 23 Feb 2003
Soon after I bought this book, I studied systematics at college and was disappointed that in 5 or 6 weeks the teachers presented a highly flawed, inaccurate and uninteresting view of the field - even believing it to be a boring area of biology. Tudge makes it absolutely fascinating and if the reader perseveres with the first few chapters where he slowly and steadily build a fair technical understanding so that you will get past words like 'polyphyletic' without blinking. For me that is one mark of popular science - it is more than interesting - you learn something and afterwards could approach more technical books such as a few in the well ordered bibliography, with little fear. In short Tudge does something amazing; gives a portrait of every living thing on the planet. Viruses are excluded but in terms of cell based lifeforms it is a comprehensive overview. Even extinct creatures are included so that you will have a complete understanding of the separate dinosaur groups that gave rise to birds and which to mammals. The book is a tremendous achievement as accessible science and as an overview of all life.

An accessible, up-to-date overview of evolution, 11 Oct 2000
I have often been frustrated about the difficulty of getting hold of reliable information about the history of life on earth and the inter-relationships of living things. Now, my frustration is at an end. Colin Tudge has done the impossible, and synthesised the mountain of rapidly changing data about evolutionary history into a single, clearly written volume. The book is beautifully illustrated, and lucidly laid out, so that the reader can use it as a ready reference guide if he so wishes. But it can also be read at length, and the mine of information is rich indeed. The field of systematics is changing rapidly, but Tudge's book is unlikely to go out of date very quickly, as he is clear to indicate the areas where our current knowledge is most precarious. A must for all those interested in evolution.

Absolutely brilliant, 31 Dec 2007
Absolutely brilliant, if you are studying horticulture this book is a must, you will use it from cover to cover.

The Cambridge Illustrated Glossary of Botanical Terms, 06 Jun 2007
Excellent, clear diagrams with a comprehensive glossary for reference.

A concise invaluable study aid., 13 Mar 2002
I am currently studying Botany/Biology, I have found this book invaluable. The glossary is excellent for those who are studying the basics, or for those qualified in the field but require a refresher. There are a variety of illustrations, which really reduce the learning curve. For those who require more detailed information, expect to look elsewhere. My personal opinion is, this book is a major visual contribution to a subject that can be a little dry on occasion.

Falls between two camps., 12 Apr 2005
This update of Deni Browns existing work on Aroids is a book that it's easy to read and enjoy - full of enthusiasm and an obvious love of the subject - but not so easy to use, in any practical sense of the word.

There are lots of plants listed, (although by no means a compehensive list of aroids) but relatively little information about their behaviour or needs in cultivation. The photogpahs are very fine, but not numerous to create a coffee-table type book that one could browse through for the beauty of the plants alone.

To be fair "Aroids" is not designed as a growers guide, nor as a botanical monograph, but it's not really clear who else it could be aimed at either.

Personally I've not returned to the book since I read through it the first time.

Should be required reading for would-be scientists, 28 Jun 2008
A little slow to get going - you think that Gee might have been attending a few too many Creative Writing courses. (Why do popular science authors think that every miniscule detail of their field trips is fascinating or relevant to the science?) It's worth the wait however, as this is a very clear explanation for the average person of the aims of cladistics, with some detailed discussions as applied to the fish/tetrapod relationship, birds/dinosaurs, and the hominids.

Gee reminds us that a scientific hypothesis should be testable, a precept virtually forgotten by today's disingenuous science in which total conjecture is always being handed down to us as incontrovertible fact. Contrary to the long-standing viewpoint of palaeontologists and evolutionary biologists, cladistics argues that any temporal or causal link between any fossil and any other fossil or any living species simply cannot be proven - they are after all dead and gone; the best we can do is create bifurcating "cladograms" indicating some sort of inferred relationship, without any temporal axis.

Some of the discussion of birds contained herein may well require a rewrite with the recent exposure of some Chinese bird fossils as fakes. Also, a picture is worth a thousand words, and a book like this really ought to contain some pictures of fossils and anatomical drawings to explain the points made in the text - there are none at all.

Despite such faults, this book should be required reading for anyone intending to embark upon a scientific career - this is what science should be about. Let's get back to our scientific roots.

Lost in Deep Time, 13 Apr 2000
Henry Gee's "Deep Time" is, if you will excuse the pun, a most timely book. Over the past ten years or so we have been treated to an increasingly rich diet of 'evolutionary' explanations for almost every conceivable human physical and psychological attribute on the basis of a highly speculative and scientifically untenable interpretation of the role of genes, inspired to a large extent by what biology professor Brian Goodwin termed the "absurd and degenerate concept" of the so-called 'selfish gene'.

If, as Henry Gee states, most professional palaeontologists "rejected the story-telling mode of evolutionary history as unscientific more than 30 years ago', then the appearance of a book about cladistics - the subject of "Deep Time" - is long overdue. Cladistics is the science of relationships based on verifiable attributes, as gleaned from comparative anatomy, physiology and embryology, from palaeontology and recently also from the comparison of gene sequences in plants and animals.

Such studies, in the view of cladists such as Gee, lead only to patterns of kinship - degrees of closeness of relationship based on observable features of structure and form. Any interpretation or extrapolation of such data to generate evolutionary lineages - lines of descent - is unscientific and therefore invalid. Such narratives of human or animal evolution are just that - stories invented to satisfy subjective prejudices about our place in nature, in particular about the presumed inevitable upward progression of evolution. "Deep Time", the 4.5 billion-year history of the Earth, and the extraordinary sparsity of the fossil record allow no valid conclusions to be drawn about how or why evolution occurred.

Cladistics claims to be an objective scientific method primarily on the basis that it is testable. Yet Gee admits that the test applied by cladists - Occam's Razor or the Principle of Parsimony - is unreliable and can never reveal the truth, which Gee says is unknowable. We are therefore left hanging in the void. We are told that 'almost everything we have been told about evolution is wrong', that we must abandon the stories of a progressive evolutionary process leading to Man, but we are given instead a scientific method which has nothing to say about the 'how' or 'why' of evolution and which is in any case apparently unreliable.

There is a further paradox. If the objective facts studied by cladists can say nothing about the how or why, then they can neither confirm nor deny Darwin's theory. Gee seems strangely ambivalent about this, at times acceping the lack of proof for Darwinism, at others using the assumption of the fact of natural selection to make his case e.g. when he simply asserts that evolution (because it is Darwinian) can have no direction or purpose.

Cladistics should nonetheless be welcomed. It has potential - if objectively pursued - to cut through the pseudo-science which currently bedevils evolution theory. It can help us towards a clearer view of our place in nature - but only if it is genuinely open to ALL the facts.

There is a kind of sub-plot to "Deep Time", in which Gee joins those who feel the need to knock humans off any kind of imagined pedestal, to reduce us to an insignificant accident of cosmic history. Bipedality, the manufacture and use of tools, language, intelligence, creativity and self-consciousness are all dismised as 'really not very special'. One has to ask if this is an objective assessment of the facts, unprejudiced by personal preferences and why it is that Gee fails to mention those facts of comparative embryology and anatomy which tell a very different story of evolution from the Darwinian one.

excellent theoretical introduction, 18 Nov 2007
This book provides an excellent theoretical introduction all of the major concepts and models used in phylogenetics. It considers the more recognized models implemented in all the standard software packages such as PHYLIP, PAUP and PAML as well as considering more recent developments in Bayesian analysis implemented in software such as BEAST and MrBayes. Anyone with a good grounding in calculus should be able to follow this book without any problems, although i wouldn't recommend it for pure biologists. The book " Bioinformatics and Molecular Evolution" by Paul Higgs and Teresa Attwood is a much more gentle introduction to almost all the same material, but without going overboard on the mathematics.

What i also like about Yang Ziheng's book is his style of writing. I think there are few scientific writers who can express themselves with such clarity, something that comes through in his journal publications as well.

Superb coverage but some plates are inaccurate, 12 Nov 2008
Firstly the good points. The book covers the whole of Africa south of the Sahara including migrants. It weighs about a kilo but is still very useable as field guide. Its comprehensive coverage means it is the only real choice for somewhere like Zambia. The descriptions are brief but good enough and the distribution maps are fine. Illustrations of birds are by colour plates (far superior to photographs). The book is well laid out with the pages colour coded by species, importantly the text, distribution and plates are all next to each other for each bird.
After a couple of trips to Zambia I had made a few hand written notes in the book about accuracy of the colour plates. However, after a trip to Tanzania the number of comments I put in about inaccuracy increased significantly. Most plates are fine but there is a significant percentage that are not quite correct. Its not major things but details of the colours and tones. For example the most distiguishing feature of the greater blue eared starling is the prominent yellow eye, however, the plate shows this to be rather dull and not at all prominent. In Tanzania the guides were all using Fanshawe's East Africa guide and to be brutally honest, it is a far superior publication. I didn't notice any errors in the plates in Fanshawe's guide and also the number of plates per species is vastly increased (I recognise that this is not possible in a book covering a far larger area as it would be far too big).
So, if you want a single book to cover the whole of Africa or are going somewhere (eg Zambia) that is not covered by other guides then get this book. If you're going to East Africa then get Fanshawe's East Africa guide as its far superior. This book is good but it is let down by the accuracy of some plates.

A "must" for all ornithological travellers to Africa, 01 Dec 2003
While I fully agree with the previous reviewer as to the variable quality of some illustrations, I still give this monumental work five stars. The mere fact that we now have a book that depicts all the species within the vast area covered in a decent way deserves praise. This would hardly have been economically possible without the recourse to the illustrations from previous field guides. At any rate, the book gives the intended most welcome overview. For those areas with good regional field guides, it makes sense, of course, to concentrate on those books.
By necessity, the texts in the present book are very short; but they are informative. The range maps do not differentiate by season; there are brief infos in the text, however.

A major breakthrough, 31 Oct 2003
Bird watching in Africa as always been divided to 3 main regions; west, east and south. Consequently, our knowledge of birds in areas outside of these classic boundaries is much more basic. This book is the first time ever that a field guide is aiming for the whole region - from 20 deg N up to 200 nautical miles off the continent shores (including Socotra but not Madagascar, Seychelles and other Indian and Atlantic Ocean Islands). Thus, promoting a more ‘holistic’ view of the African Avifauna and showing species that are less likely to be found in the more traditional field guides.

Many of the plates have been taken from earlier publications (Birds of Southern Africa, Struik 2002 and Birds of Prey of Africa, Struik 1998); others were commissioned specially for this project. Generally, there is a feeling of browsing in one of the SA field guides but with a widen species list. The quality of the plates is always a matter of taste and as been said before, we the ‘birdwatchers’ are very hard to please! Like with other field guides, it is a very fragile balance between art and science and to catch a species ‘jizz’ is a very hard task indeed.
Most of the species have good illustrations that portray distinctive plumages, accurate and realistic and can easily meet the modern standards, some can almost ‘jump out’ from the pages - some Robins, Thrushes, Bulbuls and Canaries are just few examples for these. In some cases, diagnostic flight patterns are also displayed (Nightjars, Crakes, Ducks…). Still there are some that the illustrators did not manage catching the ‘jizz’ properly and missed out a good opportunity to improve earlier plates (some Swallows, Mousebirds, Larks, and Pipits can be examples for that).

With all that in mind, I still think that this book is an essential on each bird lover library. The ability to catch so many species in a compact layout and still stay relatively loyal for details is a major break through! Moreover, its continental scope is vital for the understanding of many conservation projects that are still to take action in the future in order to maintain this rich Avifauna region.

In fiction this would be an epic!, 26 Mar 2004
An imposing book by a major science writer, Tudge rightly subtitles this work "a celebration." Although at first glance the book seems overwhelming, Tudge has broken down his feast of life into easily consumed portions. After an excellent overview of the history of classifying life, he allows the reader to choose among the many types of animals and plants. One can jump to insects, birds, fish or reptiles for more detailed evolutionary accounts and modern examples. Unable to resist, i skimmed over a few more esoteric examples to settle down to Primates and Hominids. This section provides a superb overview of current knowledge, distinguishing clearly what is known and what is supposed. This was familiar territory but delving in the other sections proved equally rewarding. However, this also suggests a warning that the book is not a "cover-to-cover" exercise.

Tudge opens with the problem facing many new students of biological sciences - how to deal with the immensity of information confronting them. There are, he notes, over two million species described already. No-one disputes the number is far below the actual total life contains - but what is the realistic total? Estimates range as high as 100 million - an almost inconceivable figure. He accepts the more likely total as around thirty million, recognizing that such numbers remain out of human ken. From this, he builds his case that classification systems are necessary. What's required is a classification method that anyone can grasp. He finds the solution in the idea proposed by German entomologist Willi Hennig - cladistics. This system arranges life by characteristics, avoiding confusing generalities and the arcane mysteries of genetics. As Tudge argues, cladistics has become fourth phase of classification systems, and the one likely to endure.

The "technical" sections of the book, covering the multitude of life forms each open with a descriptive essay followed by a "tree" of relationship among various species. This structure makes the book an excellent reference work and will keep it valuable for many years. The illustrations are designed to impart general information, not scientific detail. Neither are they simplistic as the supporting comment provides pointers to consider when viewing them. Tudge groups the text and graphics nicely, allowing visual and text comparison without constant page flipping.

As with any author confronting the immense cargo of information available in biology, Tudge was forced into a selective process in creating a bibliography. It's not an enviable task. The list appears sparse, a heavily pruned tree arranged by chapters. He indicates his preferred references, but only by using his sources will you discover whether more bountiful reading is listed in them. This lack in no way impairs the worth of this effort, however. There are countless book lists available. Anyone with an interest in life will treasure this volume.

Excellent as popular science and as a reference work, 23 Feb 2003
Soon after I bought this book, I studied systematics at college and was disappointed that in 5 or 6 weeks the teachers presented a highly flawed, inaccurate and uninteresting view of the field - even believing it to be a boring area of biology. Tudge makes it absolutely fascinating and if the reader perseveres with the first few chapters where he slowly and steadily build a fair technical understanding so that you will get past words like 'polyphyletic' without blinking. For me that is one mark of popular science - it is more than interesting - you learn something and afterwards could approach more technical books such as a few in the well ordered bibliography, with little fear. In short Tudge does something amazing; gives a portrait of every living thing on the planet. Viruses are excluded but in terms of cell based lifeforms it is a comprehensive overview. Even extinct creatures are included so that you will have a complete understanding of the separate dinosaur groups that gave rise to birds and which to mammals. The book is a tremendous achievement as accessible science and as an overview of all life.

An accessible, up-to-date overview of evolution, 11 Oct 2000
I have often been frustrated about the difficulty of getting hold of reliable information about the history of life on earth and the inter-relationships of living things. Now, my frustration is at an end. Colin Tudge has done the impossible, and synthesised the mountain of rapidly changing data about evolutionary history into a single, clearly written volume. The book is beautifully illustrated, and lucidly laid out, so that the reader can use it as a ready reference guide if he so wishes. But it can also be read at length, and the mine of information is rich indeed. The field of systematics is changing rapidly, but Tudge's book is unlikely to go out of date very quickly, as he is clear to indicate the areas where our current knowledge is most precarious. A must for all those interested in evolution.

Absolutely brilliant, 31 Dec 2007
Absolutely brilliant, if you are studying horticulture this book is a must, you will use it from cover to cover.

The Cambridge Illustrated Glossary of Botanical Terms, 06 Jun 2007
Excellent, clear diagrams with a comprehensive glossary for reference.

A concise invaluable study aid., 13 Mar 2002
I am currently studying Botany/Biology, I have found this book invaluable. The glossary is excellent for those who are studying the basics, or for those qualified in the field but require a refresher. There are a variety of illustrations, which really reduce the learning curve. For those who require more detailed information, expect to look elsewhere. My personal opinion is, this book is a major visual contribution to a subject that can be a little dry on occasion.

Falls between two camps., 12 Apr 2005
This update of Deni Browns existing work on Aroids is a book that it's easy to read and enjoy - full of enthusiasm and an obvious love of the subject - but not so easy to use, in any practical sense of the word.

There are lots of plants listed, (although by no means a compehensive list of aroids) but relatively little information about their behaviour or needs in cultivation. The photogpahs are very fine, but not numerous to create a coffee-table type book that one could browse through for the beauty of the plants alone.

To be fair "Aroids" is not designed as a growers guide, nor as a botanical monograph, but it's not really clear who else it could be aimed at either.

Personally I've not returned to the book since I read through it the first time.

Should be required reading for would-be scientists, 28 Jun 2008
A little slow to get going - you think that Gee might have been attending a few too many Creative Writing courses. (Why do popular science authors think that every miniscule detail of their field trips is fascinating or relevant to the science?) It's worth the wait however, as this is a very clear explanation for the average person of the aims of cladistics, with some detailed discussions as applied to the fish/tetrapod relationship, birds/dinosaurs, and the hominids.

Gee reminds us that a scientific hypothesis should be testable, a precept virtually forgotten by today's disingenuous science in which total conjecture is always being handed down to us as incontrovertible fact. Contrary to the long-standing viewpoint of palaeontologists and evolutionary biologists, cladistics argues that any temporal or causal link between any fossil and any other fossil or any living species simply cannot be proven - they are after all dead and gone; the best we can do is create bifurcating "cladograms" indicating some sort of inferred relationship, without any temporal axis.

Some of the discussion of birds contained herein may well require a rewrite with the recent exposure of some Chinese bird fossils as fakes. Also, a picture is worth a thousand words, and a book like this really ought to contain some pictures of fossil