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Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful, Accessible Guides
Review: Lone Pine books are probably the most pleasing nature guides I've seen. They aren't as lean and functional as some of the great bird ID guides, they're... pleasing, like a really engaging encyclopedia. Their layout, their spare but well-written texts, their thoughtfully done range maps, their size and weight, their durable feeling, and just the overall tone of these books all feel right, just right. As a publisher, Lone Pine seems to be aiming for spots that aren't saturated with competitors. They're also taking a regional approach. So, we get a "Plants of the Rocky Mountains" title from Lone Pine, with trees and perennials and annuals and so on, rather than an "Eastern Wildflowers" or something like that. This Mammals book is more of a browsing sort of guide, a reference you skim through or go to check when you've see something, rather than an identification helper you'd use with binoculars. I'm sure it'd be fine as an actual ID guide too, but the idea here isn't to get a bunch of comparable deer species onto the same page to let you compare, it's to provide enough space for each species to really come into its own. (There is a little paragraph for each animal explaining what you could mistake for it, but that's not quite the same. And anyway, how many types of bear are there in the Rockies?) I've also seen a Squirrels guide from them that seemed to follow much the same style. The format's beautiful, easy to use and very consistent. Each species includes at least one illustration and one photo, along with four pages of loving description. There are nice little callouts with explanatory text about behavior and so on. It's all extremely easy on the eye. Once you've used one of this company's books, you'll probably want to set a shelf aside at your cabin.
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