The Birdbooker Report 2: Notes on Bird (and Natural History) Books

tags: , ,

"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).

Here's this week's issue of the Birdbooker Report by Ian Paulsen, which lists bird and natural history books that are (or will soon be) available for purchase.

New and Recent Titles:

  1. Barcott, Bruce. The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's fight to save the World's most beautiful bird. 2008. Random House. Hardbound: 336 pages. Price: $26.00 [Amazon: $17.16; I have requested a review copy of this title]. SUMMARY: This book follows Sharon Matola's struggle to save the Scarlet Macaw in Belize.
  2. Burnett, D. Graham. Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York court case that put the whale on trial and challenged the order of nature. 2007. Princeton University Press. Hardbound: 304 pages. Price: $29.95. SUMMARY: Documents the 1818 trial to determine whether or not the whale was a fish or a mammal.
  3. Grimmett, Richard; Inskipp, Carol and Inskipp, Tim. Birds of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. 1999. Princeton University Press. Paperback: 384 pages. Price: $35.00 [Amazon: $23.10]. SUMMARY: A Field Guide to the Birds of the Indian Subcontinent.
  4. Isaak, Mark. The Counter-Creationism Handbook. 2007. University of California Press. Paperback: 362 pages. Price: $19.95 [Amazon: $13.57]. SUMMARY: A good companion book to Prothero's "Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters."
  5. Montague, Julian. The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A guide to field identification. 2006. Abrams Image. Paperback: 176 pages. Price: $19.95 [Amazon: $13.57].
  6. Restall, Robin; Rodner, Clemencia; Lentino, Miguel. Birds of Northern South America: An Identification Guide, Volume 1 & Volume 2. 2007. Yale University Press. Paperback in two volumes. Price: $150.00 for both volumes. Each volume is sold separately [Amazon: $135.60 for both]. SUMMARY: Volume 1 is the Species Accounts, Volume 2 is the Plates and Maps.
  7. Robson, Craig. Birds of Southeast Asia. 2005. Princeton University Press. Paperback: 304 pages. Price: $35.00 [Amazon: $23.10]. SUMMARY: Another title in the Princeton Field Guides Series.

Don't forget to vote in The Bookseller magazine's competition to choose the oddest book title (the Diagram Prize in the UK).

That's all for this week. Stay tuned to this space for weekly updates every Sunday at noon EST (that's 9am for all of you living in Birdbooker's part of the country).

More like this

Hey, G/S,
Now you have given me yet another reason to read your blog regularly. I would like to follow up on the book about the taxonomy of stray shopping carts in the East. Down here they exist in symbiosis with homeless people, something that characterizes the free-market/evil Conservative ecology of the USA.

By biosparite (not verified) on 24 Feb 2008 #permalink