Carnivores

A beautiful and detailed reference book covering every non-pinniped species of Carnivoran. The photos are gorgeous throughout, and supplemented by artwork depicting each individual species. Each family gets a chapter, with a considerable amount of information on their general habits, anatomy, taxonomy, and so forth, followed by individual descriptions and range maps for each species. This makes for a very hefty book indeed, which explains the high price tag.

It's hard to nitpick when the book is such an incredible resource. One could, perhaps, complain that the pinnipeds ought to be included too, but the book is long enough as it is, and they will appear in Volume 4 anyway. There's also the issue that, if anything, too many species are listed, with some that are more commonly considered subspecies prematurely elevated to a higher rank (this is actually more of a problem in Volume 2)... but then, one's almost complaining that the book has too much information.

A more genuine issue is that, while very well referenced, it's done in such a way that it's hard to identify which reference applies to which piece of information. This prevents breaking up the text, and enhances readability, but will require more work from the reader who wants to locate the source material, so it's a two-edged sword.

Such minor niggles aside, this is about as good as it gets. It is a large tome, to be sure, but I've not seen a more detailed and well-illustrated book on the world's mammalian carnivores.