Rating: 
Summary: A great book on a rather unknown subject
Review: I liked this book. Granted, there is very little is known about this wonderful creature. At times it seemed like the author was just trying to fill pages but with the giant squid, you have to do something. I liked that he did go into how the animal was discovered and how our knowledge of giant squid has developed through time. This is undoubtly one of the coolest sea creatures in the world, so it was nice to get a pretty thorough story. He does describe some of the many other squids, I liked that because he gives you a feel for how diverse and cool squids are. It did get a little slow towards the end but I was still very pleased with the book overall. This book gives a very complete treatment of this legendary beast.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent writing on a bizarre subject
Review: I read this book after seeing a Discovery Channel special on the Giant Squid. I know nothing about science, but I am a huge history enthusiast, as well as someone who loves the ocean. Ellis' book is amazing - not too heavy with biology or science in general. He focuses on the history of human encounters with "sea monsters," which he attributes to rogue giant squid, as well as with dead or dying specimens of the Architeuthis itself. As a work of history, this book is fantastic. Ellis' synthesis of what is actually known about the Giant Squid is also excellent. He presents the multiple theories about the animal's behavior, locomotion, feeding habits, and reproduction. He also dispels many of the rumors about the squid, including those concerning its true maximum size (although his final anecdote leaves the question excitingly unanswered). I recommend this book for anyone interested in scientific history in general, and that concerning the beasts of the ocean in particular.
Rating: 
Summary: A monstrous disappointment
Review: I was looking for a good popular science book and this book sounded intruiging. However, it reads more like a senior thesis on the squid. Its sheer number of block quotes and accounts of similar sighting to similar sighting made it hard to get through. Also, he never really bothers to explain a lot of terms or give us a good introduction on the squid. Why is that Mr. Ellis? I guess because this book is for squidophiles with experience, and I was just looking for a good, informative read.
Rating:
Summary: Oh, squid, oh squid...
Review: I would have enjoyed the book had it been a simple narrative of the hunt for the giant squid or merely a popular science digest of all Ellis knows about the animal. But Ellis has contributed to a *cultural* history of the giant squid, which is much more interesting to me than the other options.
Dry, perhaps, but not dull, the chapter on models is a welcome subject in this context. Museum display brings his focus once again to how our own attitudes, expectations and desires influence how we see the world. This emotional dynamic should be understood, no matter how unpopular it is - especially when dealing with the reflecting surface of a mysterious natural phenomenon. The search for the giant squid is more than anything else a story of human desire for the unattainable, and this is what gives the inscrutable animal much of its sublime, ghostly charm.
Ellis' writing is a bit schizoid in style, and he does repeat himself a bit, but I actually find the effect weirdly compelling. The many curiously casual passages on naming and specimin statistics read like the encyclopedic enthusiasm of sports commentary, and the repeating scenario of finding the limp animal washed up on one beach or another eventually gains an interesting psychic resonance of a different kind. I might agree that it isn't the most elegantly crafted book, but it is where the seams show that I enjoyed it the most.
Rating: 
Summary: Calamari ... the tofu alternative
Review: I'm not a scientist and don't play one on TV. I picked up this book knowing nothing about Giant Squids ... or *any* squids, for that matter. The first few chapters were fascinating. Ellis explores the history of man's encounters with the squid past to present. A nice discussion of squid taxonomy and biology reads well for the non-scientist. It also hammers home exactly how much we *don't* know about the Giant Squid. Unfortunately, the book quickly becomes hackneyed. As other reviewers have pointed out, Ellis seems to revel in poking holes in the writings of early scientists and observers. Even so, it's interesting to read what these early seamen thought of an other-worldly creature. So, while I enjoyed the book, it's not one I plan to keep on my shelf.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: I'm really torn about this one. On the one hand, I don't think that this is book that lay people can enjoy; we simply know too little about Architeuthis to satisfy the general public. On the other hand, as a specialist, I found what information there was to be really interesting. The sad fact is that although the giant squid is a very enigmatic organism, we simply haven't been able to acquire much information about it. By this I mean we know VERY little about the giant squid. Most of the ecological data we do have comes from gut content analysis of whale stomachs or dissections of semi-rotting carcasses. We don't have enough information about Architeuthis to satsify scientists, let alone the general pubilic. That said, however, this was an excellent review of the information that is available about giant squids. It's hard to get this type of information, in a digestable format, about most organisms. Sadly, though, I think this work should have been published in a journal, perhaps the American Scientist, rather than being published as a mass consumption book. My overall conclusion is: if your a lay person, stay clear you likely won't get much out of this; if your a specialist go for it! It's cheap and a handy reference. Don't be too excited about the section on squid ecology, however, it's not particularly detailed and there are much better reviews elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: An uninteresting search on a remarkable animal
Review: I've always been fascinated by films and narratives of battles between nature's keystone species. A grizzly struggling to take down a moose in North America; a South American jaguar trying to uncoil an anaconda from his body; a pride of lions facing down a pack of hyenas over a kill in Kenya - there is something riveting to me about such animal clashes. One of the most epic battles in the animal kingdom - and certainly the largest* - is between the sperm whale and the giant squid. The sperm whale is the largest toothed whale in the world, with the biggest specimens measuring sixty feet long and weighing approximately 50 tons. The giant squid - known more precisely as architeuthis dux - is, at least in theory, a formidable foe to the sperm whale, which measures over 50 feet long and weighs over a ton.
One of the most surprising things for this reader about Richard Ellis' book is the discovery that what I thought might be an epic battle between two behemoths is almost certainly a very one-sided affair, with the sperm whale winning nearly every time. The giant squid is a large enough beast that it can prey on many fair-sized species of shark and probably has no other natural foes, but the sperm whale appears well-adapted to counter its size and strength. I say "appears," because no one is really sure what to make of the battles between whale and squid - they have almost never been seen. Nearly everything about them has to be inferred from dead whales or dead squids.
Even more surprising, given the level of interest in the beast, is how little is known about the giant squid at all. Not until after the publication of this book was a healthy giant squid even observed in its natural habitat. But when Richard Ellis was working on his study, not a single specimen that was not either dead or dying had ever been seen or filmed. Almost everything known about these giants of the deep has to be studied through remains, usually found in the stomachs of dead and slaughtered sperm whales or, far less often, washed up on beaches around the world. So little is known about the giant squid that it presents a problem for this book. What happens when you throw a two-hundred page party and the guest of honor doesn't show up?
Ellis does his best to keep the reader's attention, but he's working with thin material. He writes a chapter on whether the giant squid is the mythical sea monster of old. He also includes large chapters on the literary and cinematic portrayals of the creature and on models built of it. Ellis seems to be doing everything he can to justify writing a two-hundred-and-fifty-page book for what probably only deserves a hundred and fifty pages. (Maybe he was getting paid by the word.)
Despite this paucity of solid knowledge on the squids, there are still some interesting details in the book. Sperm whales, for example, have been found with literally thousands of indigestible squid beaks in their stomachs. Not all of these belong to giant squids, but the number is impressive anyway. (Unbelievably, one sperm whale's stomach had 18 thousand squid beaks in it.) The book also goes into the wonderful variety of cephalopods. With more than seven hundred species, including numerous octopi, squids and cuttlefishes, the cephalopods represent one of the largest groups of animal mass in the world, thickly populating every known ocean. And the eye of the giant squid is huge, more than fifteen inches in diameter. There are numerous details like these in the book, making it worthwhile to read, despite its lack of concrete knowledge.
*****
* I read news reports last year that mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni - the Antarctic or colossal squid - is now considered by some scientists to be larger than the giant squid. The book may also be dated in other ways, despite its relatively recent publication.
Rating: 
Summary: A look at the deep sea's most elusive creature.
Review: It can grow sixty feet in length, possibly longer, and weigh more than a ton. It is a spindle-shaped creature with two elongated, whip-like tentacles at one end and a pointed tail at the other, a huge beak between its arms, and two lidless eyes the size of dinner plates. The giant squid is the least-known large animal on earth. In THE SEARCH FOR THE GIANT SQUID, one of this country's foremost authorities on ocean life, Richard Ellis, provides the first authoritative study of this most mysterious of ocean creatures. Delving into myth, literature, and science, he separates fact from fiction and brings us face-to-face with this aquatic beast. He also gives us a thorough, compelling study of what is known and what is still to be discovered about this most exotic animal, which has never been studied alive.
Rating:
Summary: Publishers Weekly review
Review: Publishers Weekly, 10 August 1998: It is surprisingly strange that, as Ellis writes, "no one has ever seen a living, healthy giant squid" -- for, judging from the evidence, comprised mostly of carcasses and remains found in sperm whales, there are a multitude of the beasts out there, growing up to 60 feet long, albeit usually, it's thought at a depth of several hundred feet. But it's not at all strange that, from the meager evidence about Architeuthis, Ellis -- author of such fine books as Imagining Atlantis (Forecasts, May 25) and Monsters of the Sea (1995; portions of this newest Ellis book first appeared there) -- has fashioned an absorbing work of natural history and a classic of cryptozoology. Some of the appeal of this book is visual, as it presents 30 b&w photographs and 35 line drawings, many historical, several of the drawings by Ellis himself. It's the author's elegant, informative, passionate text that ultimately carries the day, however, as this marine scientist reports on every aspect of the giant squid and its study, covering its biology and behavior, its taxonomy, historical records of its appearances, its treatment in literature, film and museum models, and more. And Ellis not only reports on but sifts through the record, challenging several previous "sightings," most notably those of Jacques Cousteau. At times, the book has a kitchen-sink-and-all feel, as if Ellis aims to cram in every known bit of data about the giant squid; even dedicated monster-lovers may find more here than they want to know. Still, the giant squid may be the Earth's last great unknown animal; certainly it is one of nature's enduring mysteries. In this authoritative book, Ellis vivifies and celebrates that mystery with erudition and consummate skill. Newbridge Natural Science Book Club main selection; author tour. (Oct.)
Rating:
Summary: Par for this decent popular science author
Review: Richard Ellis has written several interesting, accessible books about ocean life. Giant Squid reads almost like a "best of" compilation, reprising a lot of the Architeuthis Dux material from his other titles. Basically it's all been rephrased, and he has a chance here to go into more patient detail this time, but none of it is exactly new. If you found this book enjoyable, I'd strongly recommend "Monsters of the Sea" (for the raise-the-hairs-on-your-arm mystery it calls up) and either the Encyclopedia of the Sea or Deep Atlantic (because those will show you Ellis's impressive illustrations). Ellis really needs a more active editor or something. Another of these reviews was right -- he often includes short repeated passages, at times within a page of two of one another. He has a clean, accessible tone as a writer, and his drawings are distinctive and eye catching, really engaging as science illustrations go. Someone should be helping him to establish a little more continuity in his text, and shaping each book so it'll lay out gracefully around his wonderful pictures. Instead Giant Squid includes only a few drawings by Ellis himself, all repeats from other books I think, and for some reason nobody's told him to put the tiresome (and weirdly overstated) footnotes ironically bashing Jules Verne to rest. (The footnotes are all repeats, too...) Short version: I'd probably recommend Monsters of the Sea, Deep Atlantic, or the Encyclopedia of the Sea first. You can come around to this later if you've got Architeuthis fever.
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