This is not the customary coffee table book with lots of neat photos of one of my favourite mammals. Rather, it also shows the blood, hunger and death by starvation that are all part of this species' life history. It has the broadest approach to this species I have ever come across, including such chapter titles as "the Origin of Polar Bears" (from Grizzlies, and still being able to cross breed), "Polar Bears and Humans", "What makes a Polar Bear Tick", "How do you study Polar Bears", "Some Highlights of Conservation, Past and Present", "The Future..." to just name a few.

The author Ian Stirling has been studying the species over four decades. Apparently, this is an expanded and updated version of a previous edition of 1998, but it definitely comes across as a new book to me.

Essentially, this book is dealing with the arctic habitat in general, and polar bears in particular. Thus highly recommended for a much wider readership than just polar bear enthusiasts.

This is the same book, just a different edition as the one issued by Helm. Thus the books basically just differ by their cover.

This is definitely a very interesting addition to my field guide library. One particularly interesting aspect of this new book is the fact that it provides info for an area that - to me - constitutes somewhat of a no man's land and at the same time the transition between familiar Europe and less well known Asia, with Siberian migrants mixed in. Of course, one could glean this info from the now complete 16 volume series of the Handbook of the Birds of the World. But it is much more convenient and exciting to have a compilation of the avifauna of this little known region.

The basic layout follows the by now traditional - and thus most welcome - pattern with the plates on the right side of a page spread, and the text with a fine, informative range map on the left page. Up front, there is an interesting chapter on the various habitats of the area, and some info on the countries. Though one would need to do a fair bit of research if trying to visit the area on one's own, I think.

The species texts are concise, yet fairly detailed within the constraints of such a book, regarding identification info. A most welcome feature is the highlighting of the most important distinguishing features. There are brief notes on voice and habitat as well.

There is a bit of getting used to the variety of the plates. I think the number of illustrators has been a bit too large, or else the quality of their illustrations is too variable. And some colors have been overdone by quite a margin. At least, I have yet to see such a bright red on a Curlew Sandpiper, and some of the pigeons I'm familiar with look much more exciting than what I'm used to. I don't presume that this is a matter of geographical variation. So I wonder how the other pigeons really look like, the ones I am not familiar with.

Over all however, the book has lots of excellent plates, and many species shown make me eager to visit the area. I'd definitely love to visit the eastern parts of Kyrgyzstan and the south-east of Kazakhstan from what I have gleaned from this fine book.

It would seem that this book is not intended for local users, as it would need the addition of local names for that purpose. But it's definitely a good start from which such local editions would be possible.

This is definitely a very interesting addition to my field guide library. One particularly interesting aspect of this new book is the fact that it provides info for an area that - to me - constitutes somewhat of a no man's land and at the same time the transition between familiar Europe and less well known Asia, with Siberian migrants mixed in. Of course, one could glean this info from the now complete 16 volume series of the Handbook of the Birds of the World. But it is much more convenient and exciting to have a compilation of the avifauna of this little known region.

The basic layout follows the by now traditional - and thus most welcome - pattern with the plates on the right side of a page spread, and the text with a fine, informative range map on the left page. Up front, there is an interesting chapter on the various habitats of the area, and some info on the countries. Though one would need to do a fair bit of research if trying to visit the area on one's own, I think.

The species texts are concise, yet fairly detailed within the constraints of such a book, regarding identification info. A most welcome feature is the highlighting of the most important distinguishing features. There are brief notes on voice and habitat as well.

There is a bit of getting used to the variety of the plates. I think the number of illustrators has been a bit too large, or else the quality of their illustrations is too variable. And some colors have been overdone by quite a margin. At least, I have yet to see such a bright red on a Curlew Sandpiper, and some of the pigeons I'm familiar with look much more exciting than what I'm used to. I don't presume that this is a matter of geographical variation. So I wonder how the other pigeons really look like, the ones I am not familiar with.

Over all however, the book has lots of excellent plates, and many species shown make me eager to visit the area. I'd definitely love to visit the eastern parts of Kyrgyzstan and the south-east of Kazakhstan from what I have gleaned from this fine book.

It would seem that this book is not intended for local users, as it would need the addition of local names for that purpose. But it's definitely a good start from which such local editions would be possible.

This book is based on the books by the same author/illustrator team that cover all of western Africa. And while most of the illustrations are the same, there is also the same limitation in quality. However, I'm more interested in having accurate illustrations for the local species than for some visiting European migrants. Having a European field guide for those species makes much more sense, as there are highest quality books for the somewhat tricky groups.

Thus, it would seem to me that the previous reviewer has been way too harsh in the star rating. Sure, I agree with the reasoning, but I also think that this book is such a fine compact field guide that it will fulfill its main goals very well.

There is the traditional layout, with a clear and concise text and clear large range maps on the left, and the color illustrations on the right of the same spread. Flight illustrations are rare for passerines (except the swallows), thus following the earlier books.

My main "gripe" is concerning the problem that it's not always easy at first glance to say which name or illustrations belong together. This could have been facilitated by using - at times - a somewhat reduced illustration. But being an advocate of decently large pictures, I prefer drawing a few separation lines myself. No big thing for me, and thus I still think the book deserves at least close to five stars.

There is also a listing of local names in three widespread local languages where such names are known at all. This should help spreading some interest among the native people as well. As it is, we tend to consider it convenient to have such a book when visiting the area. And Ghana is small enough, and it has a wide diversity of habitats, to make it attractive for visiting birdwatchers. But the book's stated purpose is also to further local interests and understanding, and thus to help contributing to the protection of our European birds on their wintering grounds. And for that purpose, it's not that critical to distinguish all the difficult warblers.

While concentrating on Ghana, the book also includes the few additional species known to occur in neighbouring Togo.

As more people spend more time in the field, there will certainly have to be some revisions. It's important to collect such data, hopefully by a local organization such as the Ghana Wildlife Society to which the book was donated on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Ala, the Swiss Society for the Study and Conservation of Birds.

This is a typical DK book in that it comes with lots of attractive pictures. It should fulfill the main goal splendidly if one wants a seasonal travel compilation. On the down side, it is rather brief for each destination or topic, a double-page spread has got to do even for a cross-continent train trip. On first sight, it is a bit confusing to find a rather wide mix of places literally well mixed all through the book. But then, its emphasis is on when to best go where. There is no info on other times of the year for the same place, when actually many locations could very well be visited at other times. But over all, one does get a decent overview of when it is probably optimal for a particular purpose. There are some minor faults, like a wrong placement of Denali NP on the maps of the inside covers, and it's not correct either, though less so, on the map of the Denali page-spread.

I'm about Barnes' or Tony's age, but I grew up in Switzerland. Thus, it struck me how similar the fifties/sixties were in both countries for high school kids, with single-sex schools and all. I like the book a lot, not reading many novels, I must say. However, there are a few things that bug me. For one, women seem to be "bystanders", mostly. Nothing about how they might have felt in the relationships involved. At best, they are either enigmas, or rather simple-minded types. The more interesting characters like Mrs. Frost remain too much in the dark. And the later conversations between Tony and Veronica are just so irritating that I can't relate to them. I very much enjoyed the first two thirds of the book. But the last third kind of seemed to be filled with not particularly important philosophical paragraphs. I could not decide whether they were needed to lengthen or increase the tension or to increase the volume of the book.

The final twist is sufficiently well hidden that I had to read it at least three times to grasp what it meant. And I would have liked a bit on how Tony really handled that. But he may have been such a cop-out that anything interesting might have been considered too unrealistic by Barnes. But then, there are two other cop-outs earlier in the game or plot. Two males commit suicide after their sexual partners got pregnant. Not facing up to responsibilities, leaving it all to the female part of the original pair is decidedly old school. But probably just typical for the time. Anyway, males don't come away very well, just concerned with their sperms it seems.

This new field guide to the birds of Panama follows the earlier book for Costa Rica in its pattern. Thus, hopes were high from the beginning when this book was announced. And the authors and publishers certainly kept their standards. Mostly, the illustrations from that Costa Rica book were retained where appropriate, but they have often been enlarged, reduced , sometimes mirrored or tilted to some extent.

So finally, there is a fine birding guide with range maps and today's customary set-up with the text, range maps and plates all on the same double-page spread. Compared to the Costa Rica volume, the printing of the plates is stronger. No more pale looking birds. Instead, there may be a few that got a bit too much ink. But overall the plates look more accurate. In particular, cotingas and honeycreepers now seem to have their correct colours.

And it's only here that one can fully appreciate the very high quality of the artwork done by Robert Dean. I think his work is at least comparable to the one by Guy Tudor, long considered the one to compare all others with when it comes to neotropical field guide illustrations. For Central America, the Dean artwork as printed in the Panama book is definitely the new standard.

There are many other improvements compared to the Costa Rica volume. Thus, range maps are now colour coded, immediately providing information on the status of a species in Panama, like breeding or migrant bird.

The most critical identification characters are highlighted in bold face, a feature already found in the Costa Rica book. However, this feature has been expanded. And the text gives much more info on how to distinguish similar species from each other. It even includes the page number when that other species is not on the same spread. Great practical help indeed! I wish this would become common standard in field guides. The map on the inside cover provides all the location names mentioned in the text. Compliments here, as well!

This book is a bit larger than the companion volume for Costa Rica. It has thus lost the advantage of being very compact. Part of the reason may be the elongated shape of Panama, as the range maps needed more space to still be meaningfully large. This is nevertheless a fairly compact volume when compared to the much larger and now outdated (for identification purposes) earlier guide book for Panama by Ridgely and Gwynne.

There is still room for improvements, of course. The major one would be to have more flight pictures. Also, I wish the book had an alphabetical quick-find index on an inside cover flap like the National Geographic guide for North American birds. The material used for the soft cover is not very good, it starts to look worn after a very short period of regular use. And since Panama is actually a Spanish speaking country, it would help to have Spanish names as well, including an index for them. This would also help to further interest among the natives. Hopefully, a Spanish edition will be in the future as well. But all that is secondary for now. The authors have to be congratulated for this very fine achievement.

This is a rather slim volume compared to other books from the DK Eyewitness Travel series. And it's also the only one that I have been somewhat disappointed with so far. Sure, the info one expects is there. But this series usually excells with lavish illustrations. And I think some improvements would be in order here. To me, somehow there is just not enough of the greatness of this fabulous city coming through. There are a few nice illustrations, like the views from the Hancock. But most pictures are not doing justice to the objects they are showing. Just two examples: the Hancock building is a major landmark with a very characteristic look. And the photo on page 64 just does not show the diagonal framework that is part of the uniqueness of this building. Likewise, the new Trump tower is shown with such a tiny picture that it's hard to imagine the impression this building actually adds to the city's skyline. Most three-dimensional drawings that DK is famous for look somewhat unfinished in this volume. And I think there could well be some more illustrations of Chicago's interesting art-deco buildings. Why is there no illustration of one of the major attractions of Millennium Park, the Crown Fountain? And the only illustration of the Bean on page 21, another major attraction of that same park, is certainly not making one want to go to enjoy it. Many of the detail maps are tucked too much into the spine of the book too. I could go on, with the somehow distorted depiction of the famous Marina towers that were the reason I originally visited Chicago in 1968, the lack of a better view of the Willis (former Sears) tower and its surroundings as seen from the famous boat tour on the Chicago River, etc, etc. Overall, it's all there, one could say, as far as mere contents is concerned, but optically crammed into too few pages.

Earlier editions of this book got excellent reviews. I suspect the problem with the 2010 edition is that the publisher did not allow sufficient room for a thorough update. The Trump tower mentioned above, as well as the Millenium park may simply have had to be squeezed in somehow. I certainly hope the next edition will have a substantial increase in the number of pages (which had remained the same from the previous edition here), with correspondingly improved coverage of some of the newer sights. Sure, the mere number of pages is no measure for the quality of a book. But the Paris guide of the same series has more than twice the number of pages compared to the present Chicago guide. As the basic standards ought to be similar, it is at least an indicator that Chicago got a bit short shrifted.

There is not much to be added to the previous reviews. But I must say that I have somewhat mixed feelings about this book.

On the one hand, I very much like its contents, as far as I can tell from the various but rather cursory inspections so far. Overall, very fine illustrations, and the book has the classic layout with the text AND range maps both being opposite the plates.

So why my mixed feelings? Well, this is a field guide, and it is unnecessarily large. For one, there is a broad (21 mm wide) grey band at the top that I consider basically superfluous. The page and plate numbers could have been fitted without that band. Overall, I think a full inch or 25 mm could have been lopped off in the book's height. And at least one cm could have been taken off in its width as well. That would have resulted in a book that would be quite a bit more compact. As it is now, many plates look like there is an awful lot of white space all around the illustrations. And if the publishers had chosen a print with just slightly less space between the lines, the book could have been made even more compact. As a comparison, this book weighs in at a bit more than one kilogram, whereas a new compact field guide for Colombia weighs a mere 400 grams. And the two countries have a comparable number of bird species. Sure the Colombia guide is a bit suffering from its compactness, but something in-between the two extremes would be ideal for an field guide that covers over 1800 species.

Somehow, I can't avoid the suspicion that there will be a more compact version in the future, after everybody has bought the large one. Doesn't this look like a business strategy we already know from other field guides? It may make economic sense, but it does not further the goodwill of the buyers. I have now made it my policy that I only get the more compact version if I really visit the area. Alternatively, one might also opt for not buying this book now, waiting for the more compact version, or the forthcoming competing books if one has no plans to visit the area in the near future.

I concur with Laszlo Wagner's fine assessment, except that I think this book still does an excellent job that deserves a four-star rating. Being compact is a major virtue in a field guide, and if one visits several countries of Central America, weight limits become all too often an important consideration. I have not used this book in the field yet, but I'm presently finding it most helpful in preparing an upcoming trip. Adding the missing pointers myself in many cases. And I still recall the times when I had no illustrated field guide for a two month visit of Costa Rica. There have been a number of books since, but this one is the most compact one if one wants to cover several countries of the area.