Customer Reviews

Northwest California: A Natural History

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I bought this book thinking it might be a field guide. It is packed with intriguing information, but is not intended as a guide for the general public. Academic in nature, it assumes comfort with undergraduate level technical information. And, it's a bit difficult to use in the field. For instance, there's a nice list of fen plants on page 60, but no mention of fens in the index, despite a paragraph defining the difference between a bog and a fen on page 26. Lists of plants and animals are provided, but are difficult to find when you want them, since they aren't all included in the index. Some latin names are indexed, some not.

Flora, fauna and minerals are not described, only listed. You'll need other field guides to ID them. Some information would have been better presented as maps and charts, rather than text, such as the geographic zone definitions.

The only part of the book I used while actually hiking were the lists. Here, the use of common names, with latin names following in parenthesis was frustrating. It results in species of one genus being separated, rather than together, on a list because they have been alphabetized by the first word of their common name. On the other hand, it is nice to have flora and fauna listed by habitat and location.

Being a somewhat nerdy amateur, I did enjoy the history of human impacts in the area, paleobotany, research findings on many topics, and conservation content. This is a serious book by an authority with many years of research to his credit, aimed at serious students. Read it at home, before you go, and in the motel or campground while you visit this beautiful and rich area, or buy more general field guides if you just want to learn names of a few plants and animals when you visit the area.