The Life of Mammals

Rating:
Summary: Packed with appealing color photos
Review: David Attenborough's Life of Mammals compliments a ten-part TV series to air on the Discovery channel which covers mammals of the world and their evolutionary processes. From learning about the navigation methods of bats and the special habits of meat eaters to understanding the natural history of water mammals, this provides a focus which contrasts environments and evolutionary processes, and makes for an important guide. Packed with appealing color photos.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining
Review: I found this book very entertaining. It is written very simply to satisfy a broad audience. The pictures are stunning. Mr. Attenbourough and his team have been able to show us animals I have never even heard of. I can hardly wait to get the DVD.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Photos, Engaging Read
Review: I read this book cover-to-cover in about 6 hours. The text is easy to read, though I do admit I had to make a short list of words to look up in the dictionary (and I'm an English major and a professional editor. Gasp!). The text is also extremely engaging. As I read "Life of Mammals," I found myself stopping to share bits and pieces of what Attenborough wrote with various family members, usually starting the conversation with, "This is amazing! Did you know...?" Attenborough devotes a lot of rich detail to the descriptions and histories of animals he choses to cover, all fascinating. There were times when I yearned for more, though I realize you can't devote too many pages to one animal when you're trying to discuss 50 or so different species in one 200+ page book. He also tried to incorporate at least one photograph of each animal he discussed, which I appreciated so much. The photos, by the way, are gorgeous. My boyfriend's 10-year old sister and I spent one hour simply looking at the photographs and discussing each, which was fun for us both. I enjoyed this book so much that I just bought "Life of Birds," also by Attenborough, and am looking forward to reading it, too.

Rating:
Summary: Good old David Attenborough...
Review: I sometimes get the idea that David Attenborough went out one year and shot 100,000 hours of nature footage, and has been creating documentaries out of it ever since. This book on the different orders of mammals, though it does not include obvious retreads like some of his earlier films and books, follows the same admittedly pleasing structure: primitive to advanced. That is, we open with monotremes and marsupials, proceed "upward" through insectivores, rodents, and so on up to homo sapiens. Each species gets a fine color photo and one or two gee-whiz details about its appearance or habits. A typically rewarding coffee-table nature book from everyone's favorite British naturalist.

Rating:
Summary: Good old David Attenborough...
Review: I sometimes get the idea that David Attenborough went out one year and shot 100,000 hours of nature footage, and has been creating documentaries out of it ever since. This book on the different orders of mammals, though it does not include obvious retreads like some of his earlier films and books, follows the same admittedly pleasing structure: primitive to advanced. That is, we open with monotremes and marsupials, proceed "upward" through insectivores, rodents, and so on up to homo sapiens. Each species gets a fine color photo and one or two gee-whiz details about its appearance or habits. A typically rewarding coffee-table nature book from everyone's favorite British naturalist.

Rating:
Summary: There are better books for the purpose
Review: This book is intended to accompany Attenborough's film series, _The Life of Mammals_. The films are chock full of wonderful footage and information, so I was excited to see the book. The book contains numerous color prints, and is almost equally informative. However, it largely (but not wholly) repeats the film. Its chapters are organized in the same fashion as the film, and the format of each chapter is basically an alternative way the film could have been produced. As a stand-alone volume, it is a decent popular book on mammals; however, it is so similar to the film that reading the book ruins rather than enhances watching the movie, and vice versa. I do not see the point of writing this book as a companion to the documentary series, and its format, with chapters that are not subdivided, is better suited for the movies than the book.

To me, a much better companion volume for Attenborough's series is David Macdonald's 2001 edition of _The Encyclopedia of Mammals_. The photographs in Macdonald's book are even larger and glossier than in Attenborough's book, plus there are photographs of almost every taxonomical group. If one sees Attenborough first, Macdonald's book allows readers to hone in on species and groups that they saw in the movie and found interesting, or see the animals that Attenborough left out. If one reads Macdonald first, which mammals Attenborough will choose to show and how becomes a guessing game. Unlike Attenborough's book, the format of Macdonald's book exploits the advantage of using a book over a movie--the subsections are well divided by taxonomical group, and readers can move at their own pace more easily and focus on only one species or a few species, if they so choose.

Rating:
Summary: There are better books for the purpose
Review: This book is intended to accompany Attenborough's film series, _The Life of Mammals_. The films are chock full of wonderful footage and information, so I was excited to see the book. The book contains numerous color prints, and is almost equally informative. However, it largely (but not wholly) repeats the film. Its chapters are organized in the same fashion as the film, and the format of each chapter is basically an alternative way the film could have been produced. As a stand-alone volume, it is a decent popular book on mammals; however, it is so similar to the film that reading the book ruins rather than enhances watching the movie, and vice versa. I do not see the point of writing this book as a companion to the documentary series, and its format, with chapters that are not subdivided, is better suited for the movies than the book.

To me, a much better companion volume for Attenborough's series is David Macdonald's 2001 edition of _The Encyclopedia of Mammals_. The photographs in Macdonald's book are even larger and glossier than in Attenborough's book, plus there are photographs of almost every taxonomical group. If one sees Attenborough first, Macdonald's book allows readers to hone in on species and groups that they saw in the movie and found interesting, or see the animals that Attenborough left out. If one reads Macdonald first, which mammals Attenborough will choose to show and how becomes a guessing game. Unlike Attenborough's book, the format of Macdonald's book exploits the advantage of using a book over a movie--the subsections are well divided by taxonomical group, and readers can move at their own pace more easily and focus on only one species or a few species, if they so choose.

Rating:
Summary: One Fine Book.
Review: Written in transparent prose which also happens to be very engaging, this book provides you with lots and lots of detailed information about all kinds of mammals, of whose lives will astound many a reader. In case you're too tired to read the text, there's always the abundance (more than 200) of top-class "spectacular color photographs," as the book description above says/claims. This happens to be true.

I can only speak from my own experience, and so I can say I'm an admirer of this man's television series. David Attenborough's enthusiasms about the natural world (be they rocks, plants, or animals) are very apparent on the screen, and definitely in this book too.

Be sure to give 'The Life of Mammals' a try.