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 ones, mostly photographs. The text is set out in double columns.
It’s certainly an American book with 60 contributors of whom only two are not from the USA. The contributors are listed in the front of the book and all the articles are signed. The work begins with four essays exploring the questions: What is biodiversity? Why is it important? What are humans doing to cause the loss of so many species? What can we do to stop the loss? Then follows the alphabetic encyclopedia entries that receive about four pages each, some longer, some shorter. Each has a bibliography with a number of see‐also references. The book concludes with a select bibliography of about 650 references, and an index. It indexes the main entries in bold type.
The articles include what one might expect in such a work, e.g. adaptive radiation, anthropology, beaches, biogeography, ecological niches, freshwater, etc. But there are also biographical entries for Darwin, Hutton, Lyell and Wallace. The quality of the articles is high. They are well written and even interesting. Checking the entries where one has some knowledge, it is apparent that they are up to date and so are the references. The entry on the Thylacine is excellent for instance, and cites two fairly new works for follow‐up research. It also strikes me that this encyclopedia will be very useful for laymen but also for students. Some of the entries would form the basis for an excellent student essay! I also like the odder entries, particularly the ones on the beauty of nature, biophilia and ethics, valuing biodiversity, and the ecological status of modern humans. There is also the sad story of the Palestinian Painted Frog that formerly inhabited Lake Hyleh in Israel and has not been recorded since the lake was drained in the 1950s. Only a few specimens were ever found. Of the two specimens collected by Mendelssohn and Steinitz, the smaller was eaten by the larger! A parallel with the Israel‐Palestine situation perhaps?
So, bearing in mind that it’s not cheap, is it worth buying? I have to say yes. There’s no doubt it would be of use for many years which would justify its price alone but it is of high quality and would form the cornerstone of a biodiversity collection.
