Customer Reviews

The Kingdon Pocket Guide to African Mammals (Princeton Pocket Guides)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
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This compact little guide is a condensed version of The Kingdon Field Guide to African Mammals by the same author. That book is easily the best overview of African mammals, with detailed info on each species/genus, but it is not really practical for use as a field guide (see my review of it).

This book contains the same illustrations arranged in a format that makes them handier for actual identification in the field.
It is very comprehensive, covering every single species of African mammals with the exception of bats, rodents, insectivores, elephant-shrews and hyrraxes, which are usually represented by one species for each genus. But every single genus is represented, and of rodents, every species of squirrel is dealt with separately.
Maps and brief info on distribution and ecology of each taxon is now to be found on the pages facing the illustrutions.
The latter are a mixed bag, as in the original work: while most are quite good, even excellent and life-like, others are quite awful, either showing animals with stiff, straight limbs/bodies as if drawn with a ruler (like the Crowned Monkey) or in highly unnatural positions (like the Potto with the limbs twisted out, or the Cheetah standing up like a circus horse).

All things considered, this is easily the best field guide to mammals of Africa, though for more in-depth information on each taxon, you may still want to have the original book in addition to this one.

I wish I had purchased this book before I went to Africa. I would have been much better prepared for seeing the animals. I bought it to help me put captions with my pictures, and find my notes do not have accurate information. Either I did not understand my guide very well, or he did not know the information this book contains.

This guide was an excellent reference on Safari, small size and well organized format made The Kingdon Pocket Guide to Africa easy to use in the field.

This book is exactly what we wanted to take with us on our upcoming safari. The book is the perfect size to carry around and covers the basics. The book is well organized and is ideal to make a quick ID in the field. We really like this layout, much better than the other well know "field guide" which is bigger, heavier, and in our opinion, poorly formatted. If you want to know every single detail about a specific animal this is not the right book; and be aware, it does not cover reptiles or birds. We are very pleased with our purchase and Amazon.com performed perfectly, we got the best price and the goods arrived within days of ordering.

I used this in Kenya, and got to know a lot of the animals there pretty well. If you are going to Africa, I highly suggest getting this, but also supplementing your research with more local resources. The book is now on the coffee table, and is pretty cool to flip through.

Excellent information if studying. Kingdon is an excellent source of CORRECT information when it comes to African animals.

Although I did not have this handbook for my trip to Africa, it serves me well to identify animals in pictures taken on the trip. It is a small size ideal for carrying into the field.

Probably this is the best field guide, the drawings are beautiful but strangely, the Dromedary is missing from this book albeit it is native to Northern Africa.

It is a good book...diagrams are detailed well and descriptions are good of the animals....good guide book for college classes.