Reader's Digest Fascinating World of Animals: A Unique 'Safari' Through Our Strange and Surprising Animal Kingdom

by Reader's Digest Association

Great photographs or animals around the world

Genres: Nature

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. is a global media and direct marketing company based in Chappaqua, New York, best known for its flagship publication founded in 1922, Reader's Digest. The company's headquarters are in New York City, where it moved from Pleasantville, New York.

The company was founded by DeWitt and Lila Wallace in 1922 with the first publication of Reader's Digest magazine, but has grown to include a diverse range of magazines, books, music, DVDs and online content.

Reviews

[Trent Marv · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alright so this book is a bit of an interesting case to review. It has a wide coverage of many animals with numerous beautiful photographs and great descriptions of various animals. This book is itself divided into three parts. First is a coverage of ten major wildlife regions, those being The Polar Regions, the Coniferous forests, the temperate forests, Deserts, Grasslands, mountains, Ocean Islands, Tropical forests, Inland waters, and Oceans. Part two discusses the evolution of animals as well as their relationship to man and other behaviors. The part three is a family tree of various groups.
With that being said it does do the wide but not deep approach. By that I mean some groups do not get much coverage. As an example, Jawless fish are reduced to a few paragraphs on a page about Cartilaginous fish (aka the group that includes sharks and rays. They get no images which is a shame because they look really cool. Honestly this happens several times where a group is mentioned but not shown which is a bit annoying. Despite this it is a great overview of the creatures of this planet and will definitely spark some interest with that being said there is some more serious issues
This is an old book, one published in 1971 as such it has some outdated things, for example it says fungi are a type of plant which is not true. It also says the Thylacine may still exist which is again not true. There's also some taxonomy in the end of the book that is no longer accurate such as making certain worm groups their own phylum when they are not. It can get bad especially when discussing evolution though they do call birds dinosaurs which is interesting to see in a book so old. Overall a interesting book to read if you can get but keep in mind it's age.