Life on Earth: An Encyclopedia of Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolution

Some books are wolves in sheep’s clothing and I think this is one such. I started off thinking this was a bit of a bore, rather bland and somewhat unattractive to boot, but, having handled it and read some entries, I have had my mind changed. It’s an elegant work in two, nearly quarto‐sized, volumes, stoutly bound and printed on acid‐free paper. In total, there are 792 pages, so it’s quite a short work with 97 articles in each volume, a total of 194. Flipping through the volumes you note that there are no colour illustrations and a few monochrome...