Book Review: Wildlife of the World by Don E. Wilson, et al.

 

Sometimes you gotta read an absolute thick unit of a book on wild animals. This is such a book.

In this book, the authors showcase us many environments and locations in the world, each with their own introduction about the landscape and the general species that live there. Each chapter then delves into some of the most major animal species that live there. Each animal is given one (or multiple) full-color photos to show what they look like, and a short description of the animal is also given. Some entries are longer (covering one or sometimes even two full pages), while some are shorter (only small subsections in each chapter, usually about a quarter of a page).

This was definitely a good book I enjoyed reading. It's not a quick read like I'd initially expected, both because of how thick the book is but also how big the pages are. There's a lot of (small) text on these pages, so it's not a breeze to get through. The book is also a bit difficult to hold because of its size, which I think is one of its few downsides. It wasn't very comfortable to read on my chair, because I didn't have enough space to put my elbows.

The stuff inside the book is very good, however. The book is clearly divided into continents, the continents into environment chapters and each environment chapter is made up out of an instruction and several smaller sections, each dedicated to a different animal species that lives there. There's a lot of (as far as I can tell) accurate information about each species, and of course the many beautiful photos of each animal really do add another layer that I don't think we could simply get with only text or a few illustrations or photos. I guess I do wish that the amount of space dedicated to some animals was a little bit more evenly spaced (like said before, some animals get an entire page worth of description and photos, meanwhile some get only a quarter of a page), but I guess they wanted to feature some animals more than others. And maybe there's simply more to say about certain species than others.

Overall this is a very well-written and informative read. The only real downside to me is that it's just not very practical to hold while reading unless you have a lot of elbow/arm space, because it's a large and thick book. 

Rating: 4/5