The Naturalist's Illustrated Guide to the Sierra Foothills and Central Valley

by Derek Madden, Ken Charters, Erinn Madden

California’s San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys and the nearby Sierra Nevada Foothills are host to abundant, varied, and often surprising plants and wildlife. This fully illustrated guide pairs over seven hundred meticulous line drawings with descriptions of the birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fishes, invertebrates, plants, and fungi that make the Central Valley and Foothill Regions their home. Like a ranger-led nature walk, each species receives a lively overview; readers will learn about freshwater jellyfish, mushrooms that decompose railroad ties, handstanding spotted skunks, salt-shedding pickleweed―not to mention insects. Every write-up not only contains fun facts but also conveys a sense of the complex connections and interactions that sustain life in a unique place. Previously published as Magpies and Mayflies (Heyday, 2005), The Naturalist’s Illustrated Guide to the Sierra Foothills and Central Valley features an attractive new cover, updated scientific and common names, and a full interior redesign.

272 pages, Paperback

Published July 7, 2020

Reviews

[Stuart Woolf]

The illustrations are excellent, but the text leaves more to be desired. Basically, the book covers too much material in too few words, covering only the most salient, but perhaps uninteresting, details of each species. If you don't know what color a monarch butterfly is, this book is for you (or maybe not, because the illustrations are colorless).

The book is too shallow to appeal to those with more than a passing interest in science, but it is also too unsensational to appeal to those who are ambivalent about science. It would be improved if more were written about fewer species, saving general traits and behaviors for sections that cover families and not individual species.