Las Aves y el Hombre

by Nigel J. Collar

Published In 2007 : 1st. UK Edition : Cemex SA Mexico : This Book Is An Extremely Large Quarto Format : Quite A Weight At 3.5 Kilos : Faint Face Rubbing To The Back Of The Dust Wrapper : Otherwise , As New Throughout : Overall, A Very Nice Book :

360 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Andrew Ives · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a massive, sumptuous, glossy, rather academic masterpiece of 350 very large pages. The Japanese printers have done a fabulous job! This tome is the heaviest book I have and probably the largest too. I took quite some months reading this all through because it's just so gorgeous, I didn't want it to end. One of the tiny criticisms I have is that I wish it was longer, and it's a crying shame that there are no hoopoes pictured! The edition I read was a 2007 first edition, which reads rather like it was written by the UN or some giant academic committee, and while this is no bad thing, the English just reads a little unnaturally in places. I found about 4 tiny typos and I wish this book came with white gloves because on the black parts of any pages, it's easy to leave a fingerprint which is a shame no matter how careful you are. I learned so many things from this book, but alas, as is true with most wildlife books, the general thread is rather bleak as mankind spoils all the habitats and has historically hunted every kind of bird for every reason imaginable. Despite this unavoidably sombre tone, it is heartening to see that most species are still extant and that so much good work is being done worldwide to understand and protect birds in recent years. If you didn't appreciate and care so much about birds before reading this book, you will afterwards. This is about as good as books can get. 5/5