This book, and it's sister one for Eastern North American, are about the best bird books I own (and I have a lot...). The layout is exemplary, with good illustrations of most of the plumages, plus good maps and brief but informative text. Also very useful are the summary pages for each bird family which gives thumbnail style pictures of all the family members on one or two pages - saves endless flicking through to narrow down the identification. While some might say that the daddy of this book - the large format whole-North America version - is more comprehensive, I would say that this version edits that information to a handy pocket size without losing any important data. A model guide.