Five Kingdoms: An Illustrated Guide to the Phyla of Life on Earth

by Lynn Margulis, Karlene V. Schwartz

This reference provides an overview of life on earth, bridging the gap between zoology and botany. The book demonstrates the amazing diversity of all living things in a manner that should be accessible.

Genres: Science, Biology, Nonfiction, Evolution, Ecology

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Lynn Margulis (1938-2011) was a Professor of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.

Reviews

[Thomas Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Textbook. Wordy. The student should first understand the subject thoroughly, before beginning study. Manages to make a fascinating subject tedious.

Quiz:
goodreads.com/trivia/work/1107233-fiv...

[Sierra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review is only about the part of the book that deals with Fungi as a kingdom. I liked how clear the text and illustrations were, especially morphological descriptions and explanations about reproduction. This being said, I would not recommend this for an introduction to fungi. The book is very interesting and helpful if you already have some basic knowledge of the vocabulary and processes at work. I am not an expert in fungi so I had to research this basic knowledge elsewhere before I could appreciate the quality of the information and additional details this book provides. A major issue I had, however, is that the taxonomy was outdated in the version I read so I had to sort what information was still relevant, and what needed to be discarded. I would say that this book is a great resource to learn more about fungi (and I assume the other kingdoms it describes) when combined with other materials, but one could argue this is the essence of any valid research.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

"We wrote it for science students, their teachers, and anyone who is curious about the extraordinary variety of living things that inhabit this planet."

Well, not very satisfactory for the last group of readers.

The entire book is black and white, except for the cover, which is almost so; the text is a mechanical catalogue of all 92 phyla, each in about 2 pages, in technical jargons, of which many are not explained or found in the glossary. With a few exceptions, each phylum has only one species or one genre detailed as an example. There is no highlighting of the "extraordinary variety"; and if any mentioning, that is buried in text, which is in the same small font throughout.

The authors, especially Prof. Margulis, are very famous scientists, but not very effective in popularizing their science with this book.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of the book consist of encyclopedia entries of sub phylas. The book makes for dense readings and I ended up skipping most of them, but the lengthy introduction and detailed descriptions of each kingdom made for interesting reading. I wanted to understand the taxonomy for all life and the difference between archaea and bacteria, and the book did that for me (I didn't realize it was due the differences in the 15s rRNA, I didn't even know there was such a thing until I read this book).

[Frank Ashe · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing book - a guide, as at 1982, of all the phyla. Us chordates are only one of nearly 100 - a humbling statistic. We're far outweighed by the others.

[Marco Ferrari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eccellente introduzione alla tassonomia globale dei phyla terrestri. é di qualche decennio fa, e quindi molto è stato cambiato, ma il libro vale ancora come documento storico e approccio alla visione di tutti i viventi. La descrizione dei phyla più grandi è ancora valida, i loro collegamenti e la filogenesi un po' meno. Ma è ancora molto bello (se lo trovate in giro). Aggiornato in Kingdoms & Domains: An Illustrated Guide to the Phyla of Life and Earth, del 2009

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good reference but like all books using a classification system there is disagreement with other authors. Great description of each group though.

[Max Carmichael · Rating 5 out of 5]

May be the most inspiring book ever created by a biologist

[Devynne_M · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book was really easy to read and understand which I really liked. and it was cool reading how they viewed the kinds then compared to now since instead of five there are seven now