Customer Reviews

Deserts (A Firefly Guide)

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As a physical geographer by profession I have explored many deserts of the world, particularly those of the American West. I was pleased to discover this book with its outstanding graphics and photographs, covering all aspects of desert landforms in a succinct manner. When reading the coverage of American deserts, however, I noticed several photos from Death Valley inserted in sections of other deserts. On Page 210 a photo of Death Valley's Racetrack is claimed to be part of the Sonora Desert. Two more photos from Death Valley (Zabriskie Point, page 231, and Artist's Palette page 233) are put in the Chihuahua Desert section. Another 2 photos of Death Valley (Mushroom Rock, page 225, and Devil's Golfcourse, page 226) are put in the Great Basin Desert section. It's almost like the authors thoroughly visited Death Valley for photos but didn't spend much (any?) time in some of the others. This might not be a major problem, but it does make me suspicious of other photos representing other deserts. I travel extensively, sometimes based on a beautiful photo I have seen. Are all of the other photos from where the authors say?

I looked through this apparently excellent book at a local book store, but became more and more dissatisfied as I examined it. I kept finding typographical errors and misstatements the more I looked. You would think that the editors would be more careful, but apparently they were not. I can only point out the few errors that I found during my examination of the copy at the book store (I did not buy it!) There is, for example, an Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, but Anza-Borrego is not a name associated with the recognized desert in which the park is located (in this case the Sonoran Desert) or a subdivision of that desert (the Colorado Desert). The Mohave (or Mojave) Desert is not characterized by large cacti- in fact the cactus flora is limited. The locations of deserts on the small maps are contradictory and confusing at least in relation to North American Deserts. Finally the photographs of some deserts in the sections devoted to a single desert are often misplaced and the Chihuahuan Desert is represented by photos of a totally barren landscape, which is not very characteristic of this desert. I know the North American Deserts pretty well, having been a professional biologist and having grown up in the Sonoran Desert and lived for the last 28 years in the Chihuahuan Desert, and so I can easily catch these errors. I have no idea what errors were made in the descriptions of other deserts, but the ones I found for North America after such a short perusal make me distrust this book as a reference. It is a great pity as the layouts are excellent, the photos are quite well produced, and this could be a short definitive work for those interested in deserts. As it stands, however, I cannot recommend "Deserts: A Firefly Guide." I wish there was another such book that I could recommend, but the "Sierra Club Naturalist's Guide to the the Deserts of the Southwest" by Peggy Larson is the best I can offer. Unfortunately it does not cover the rest of the world.

Since I wrote these lines I discovered that there is a more recent Firefly Guide to deserts, published only a few years after this one. It makes me think that the publisher was appraised of the errors in this work and then got other authors to re-write it. As I have not seen the book (I had actually confused to two apparently very distinct volumes) I cannot review it here, but I did order a copy and from the examples of text I saw it does seem much improved over the work discussed here. Thus there may be a better guide to world deserts than this.