New Title

1) Wagner, Eric. Penguins in the Desert. 2018. Oregon State University Press. Paperback: 201 pages. Price: $19.95 U.S.
PUBLISHER'S SUMMARY: Most of us wouldn’t think to look for penguins in a hot desert, but every year along a windswept edge of coastal Patagonia, hundreds of thousands of Magellanic penguins gather to rear their young at Punta Tombo, Argentina. It is the largest penguin colony in the world outside of Antarctica, and for the past three decades, biologist Dee Boersma has followed them there.
     Eric Wagner joined her team for six months in 2008, and in Penguins in the Desert, he chronicles that season in the remarkable lives of both the Magellanic penguins of Punta Tombo and the scientists who track their every move. For Boersma, the penguins are ecosystem sentinels. At the colony’s peak, more than a million birds bred there, but now less than half as many do. In confronting this fact, Boersma tackles some of the most urgent issues facing penguins and people today. What is the best way to manage our growing appetite for fish? How do we stop catastrophic oil spills from coating birds? How will we address the looming effects of climate change?
     As Wagner spends more and more time with the penguins and the scientists in the field, other equally pressing questions come to mind. What is it like to be beaten by a penguin? Or bitten by one? How can a person be so dirty for so many months on end? In a tale that is as much about life in the field as it is about one of the most charismatic creatures on earth, Wagner brings humor, warmth, and hard-won insight as he tries to find the answer to what turns out to be the most pressing question of all: What does it mean to know an animal and to grapple with the consequences of that knowing?
RECOMMENDATION: For those with an interest in Magellanic Penguins.

New Title

1) Flood, Joe. Science Comics: Sharks: Nature's Perfect Hunter. 2018. First Second. Paperback: 122 pages. Price: $12.99 U.S.
PUBLISHER'S SUMMARY: For over 400 million years, sharks have been the ocean's top predator! They're vital to our ecosystem, but their importance is often overshadowed by our own fear―even though they hardly ever threaten humans.

     Dive in for an intimate look at the dynamic hammerhead, infamous great white, primordial megalodon, and the gentle nurse shark, the rare species that will let a scuba diver pet them! This book is filled to the gills with jaw-dropping illustrations and razor-sharp facts that shed light on these fascinating creatures of the deep, including their undersea terrain, cunning adaptability, and staggering variety.
     Every volume of Science Comics offers a complete introduction to a particular topic―dinosaurs, coral reefs, the solar system, volcanoes, bats, flying machines, and more. These gorgeously illustrated graphic novels offer wildly entertaining views of their subjects. Whether you're a fourth grader doing a natural science unit at school or a thirty year old with a secret passion for airplanes, these books are for you!
RECOMMENDATION: For ages 9 -13.

New Title

1) Stenning, Martyn. The Blue Tit. 2018. Poyser. Hardbound: 320 pages. Price: $85.00 U.S.
PUBLISHER'S SUMMARY: Sporting a mix of blue, yellow, white, green, and black, the unmistakable Blue Tit echoes the hues of an Earth that is becoming increasingly populated. Blue Tits have adapted well to modern humanity, taking advantage of our propensity to feed birds and provide nest-boxes. In turn, this charismatic species provides an excellent model for research, and currently features in around 100 scientific papers annually. This new Poyser monograph is the result of a personal quest by author Martyn Stenning to bring these discoveries together in one accessible volume.

     The text initially invites readers into the intimate life of breeding Blue Tits and describes how nature has shaped their destiny. Moving on to the diversification and classification of Blue Tit variation across their range, the story progresses into population structure, life-time ecology, and mortality, culminating in an exploration of factors that determine breeding success. The book concludes with a genial selection of anecdotes, folklore, and poetry.
RECOMMENDATION: A must have for all those with an interest in the Paridae.

New Titles

1) Pyle, Robert Michael and Caitlin LaBar. Butterflies of the Pacific Northwest. 2018. Timber Press. Flexibound: 462 pages. Price: $27.95 U.S.
PUBLISHER'S SUMMARY: A comprehensive field guide to the butterflies of the Pacific Northwest from a renowned expert.
     Easy to use and beautifully illustrated with more than 600 color photographs and nearly 200 maps, Butterflies of the Pacific Northwest is a must-have for nature lovers in Washington, Oregon, western Idaho, northern California, and British Columbia. The profiles include preferred common name for both genus and species, type locality, conservation status, the look and distinguishing traits of each butterfly, the preferred food-plants and nectar plants, habitat and range, and much more. 17 illustrative plates are included to help users compare and identify species. Additional information includes a brief introduction to how butterflies work and details on ecology and conservation.
RECOMMENDATION: A MUST have for all butterfliers in the region! 

2) Holman, J. Alan. Fossil Frogs and Toads of North America. 2018 (2003). Indiana University Press. Paperback: 246 pages. Price: $30.00 U.S.
PUBLISHER'S SUMMARY: Despite being one of the most versatile and interesting amphibians in North America, frogs and toads (otherwise known as anurans) have traditionally not received enough attention from science. But now, with the population of modern frogs and toads dwindling at an alarming rate, author J. Alan Holman brings together the latest research and findings about ancient anurans, expanding the world's knowledge about these fascinating creatures while there is still time to understand and save them.

     Comprehensive and lavishly illustrated, this essential guide provides a general account of the fossil record, a detailed account of individual anuran bones used in paleontological studies, and an epoch-by-epoch discussion of Mesozoic, Tertiary, and Pleistocene anurans and the changes they experienced throughout their evolution. Fossil taxa still living are reviewed in terms of modern characteristics, ecological attributes, modern ranges, and diagnostic skeletal elements. With detailed fossil history, biology, and anatomy, Fossil Frogs and Toads of North America is an informative, accessible book for anyone interested in frogs and toads and the scientific history of their evolution into the animals we know today.
RECOMMENDATION: For those with a serious interest in fossil anurans.

New Titles

1) Johnson, Kirk Wallace. The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century. 2018. Viking. Hardbound: 308 pages. Price: $27.00 U.S.
PUBLISHER'S SUMMARY: On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London's Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist boarded a train for a suburban outpost of the British Museum of Natural History. Home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world, the Tring museum was full of rare bird specimens whose gorgeous feathers were worth staggering amounts of money to the men who shared Edwin's obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying. Once inside the museum, the champion fly-tier grabbed hundreds of bird skins—some collected 150 years earlier by a contemporary of Darwin's, Alfred Russel Wallace, who'd risked everything to gather them—and escaped into the darkness.
     Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist high in a river in northern New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide told him about the heist. He was soon consumed by the strange case of the feather thief. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? Had Edwin paid the price for his crime? What became of the missing skins? In his search for answers, Johnson was catapulted into a years-long, worldwide investigation. The gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, and one man's relentless pursuit of justice, The Feather Thief is also a fascinating exploration of obsession, and man's destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature.
RECOMMENDATION: An interesting true life crime story involving bird specimens and fly-fishing.

2) Brusatte, Steve. The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World. 2018. William Morrow. Hardbound: 404 pages. Price: $29.99 U.S.
PUBLISHER'S SUMMARY: The dinosaurs. Sixty-six million years ago, the Earth’s most fearsome creatures vanished. Today they remain one of our planet’s great mysteries. Now The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs reveals their extraordinary, 200-million-year-long story as never before.
     In this captivating narrative (enlivened with more than seventy original illustrations and photographs), Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field—naming fifteen new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork—masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy. Captivating and revelatory, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is a book for the ages.
     Brusatte traces the evolution of dinosaurs from their inauspicious start as small shadow dwellers—themselves the beneficiaries of a mass extinction caused by volcanic eruptions at the beginning of the Triassic period—into the dominant array of species every wide-eyed child memorizes today, T. rex, Triceratops, Brontosaurus, and more. This gifted scientist and writer re-creates the dinosaurs’ peak during the Jurassic and Cretaceous, when thousands of species thrived, and winged and feathered dinosaurs, the prehistoric ancestors of modern birds, emerged. The story continues to the end of the Cretaceous period, when a giant asteroid or comet struck the planet and nearly every dinosaur species (but not all) died out, in the most extraordinary extinction event in earth’s history, one full of lessons for today as we confront a “sixth extinction.”
     Brusatte also recalls compelling stories from his globe-trotting expeditions during one of the most exciting eras in dinosaur research—which he calls “a new golden age of discovery”—and offers thrilling accounts of some of the remarkable findings he and his colleagues have made, including primitive human-sized tyrannosaurs; monstrous carnivores even larger than T. rex; and paradigm-shifting feathered raptors from China.
     An electrifying scientific history that unearths the dinosaurs’ epic saga, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs will be a definitive and treasured account for decades to come.
RECOMMENDATION: A nice overview of current dinosaur knowledge.

New Titles

1) Olsen, Klaus Malling. Gulls of the World: A Photographic Guide. 2018. Princeton University Press. Hardbound: 368 pages. Price: $45.00 U.S.
PUBLISHER'S SUMMARY: With more than 50 gull species in the world, this family of seabirds poses some of the greatest field identification challenges of any bird group: age-related plumage changes, extensive variations within species, frequent hybridization, and complex distribution.
     Gulls of the World takes on these challenges and is the first book to provide a comprehensive look at these birds. Concise text emphasizes field identification, with in-depth discussion of variations as well as coverage of habitat, status, and distribution. Abundant photographs highlight identification criteria and, crucially, factor in age and subspecific field separation. Informative species accounts are accompanied by detailed color range maps.
     Gulls of the World is the most authoritative photographic guide to this remarkable bird family.

• The first book to provide in-depth coverage of all the world's gull species
• More than 600 stunning color photographs
• Concise text looks at variations, habitat, status, and distribution
• Informative species accounts and color range maps

RECOMMENDATION: A MUST have for all Larophiles!

2) Sale, Richard and Per Michelsen. Wildlife of the Arctic (Princeton Pocket Guides). 2018. Princeton University Press. Paperback: 335 pages. Price: $19.95 U.S.
PUBLISHER'S SUMMARY: Wildlife of the Arctic is an accessible and richly illustrated pocket-sized photographic field guide to the birds, land and sea mammals, and plants and lichens of the northern polar region--including Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia, and Russia. Written and illustrated by naturalists with extensive Arctic experience, this handy book features detailed facing-page descriptions of each species, including information about identification, range, distribution, and breeding and wintering grounds. A substantial introduction explains the area covered, with information on the poles, geology, snow and ice, auroras, and the influence of global warming. This portable, user-friendly guide is the perfect companion for birders, ecotourists, and cruise-line passengers visiting the Arctic Circle and other areas of the far north.

• An accessible and richly illustrated pocket-sized photographic field guide to Artic wildlife
• Features more than 800 color photos illustrating more than 250 bird species, 60 land mammals, and 30 seals and whales
• Includes extensive facing-page species descriptions and identification information
• Provides an overview of the Arctic region, with information on the poles, geology, snow and ice, auroras, and the influence of global warming
• Explores each family of birds and mammals, and has sections covering fish, insects, plants, and lichens

RECOMMENDATION: This handy-sized guide focuses mostly on birds and mammals.