The Land & Wildlife of Tropical Asia

by S. Dillon Ripley

Book 19 of the Life Nature Library.

Genres: Nature

Library Binding

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Sidney Dillon Ripley II (September 20, 1913 – March 12, 2001) was an American ornithologist and wildlife conservationist. He served as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution for 20 years, from 1964 to 1984, leading the Institution through its period of greatest growth and expansion. For his leadership at the Smithsonian, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1985.

Reviews

[Syakirah Athaya Azalea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reread books from my childhood (3)

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nature and science books from the 1980s offer overviews of a diverse range of subjects or in the case of this one, a very large geographical expanse - something sorely lacking in today's more specialized and technical reference books. From physical geological processes explaining how landmasses and islands came to be shaped as they are today, simple descriptions of the climate and how monsoon seasons occur, to the ecology of rainforests and wetlands, right down to the details of the lives of individual animal and plant species, and ending with postulations of how man came to inhabit this part of the world, the range of subjects make the book inherently fascinating. Yet, given the myriad lifeforms and vast differences of environments within the region the author had to pick only a small selection to write about to avoid making it an impossibly thick volume.

Sadly, much of the wildlife and wild places described have suffered immensely since the book's publication, Asia being at the forefront of environmental devastation today. As such, this title is to be treasured as part of the historical record providing us a snapshot in time of a biologically splendid and irreplaceable natural heritage of our planet.