Full Text Review(s)
"Complementing the broader but more simply written Wildlife and Plants of the World (Marshall Cavendish, 1998), this set offers researchers close looks at 84 types of living things, from viruses and giant centipedes to humans and gray whales. The emphasis is on physical structures and systems. Each entry opens with a discussion of its subject’s taxonomy and goes on to examine external anatomy and then, separately, each major internal system. In addition, 10 longer general articles on systems or cell biology are embedded in the alphabetically arranged contents. The final volume cumulates the individual volume indexes, adding six specialized indexes along with lists of further resources, plus short overview articles on the taxonomic groupings and the history of anatomical study. Along with frequent side boxes, including some dubbed "Connections" that have inter-volume cross-references, each entry is well-stocked with both sharply reproduced color photos and labeled, accurately detailed art. Though the coverage isn’t exactly evenhanded, with just 10 articles devoted to plants or fungi and 30 to mammals alone, this set makes a useful choice for collections supporting strong science curricula as a more focused alternative to the 24-volume International Wildlife Encyclopedia (Marshall Cavendish, 2002)."