University of Nevada Books

This book, while rich in its coverage of buildings throughout the Sagebrush State, does have its drawbacks. Some of the quotations regarding the architects list incorrect names that were taken from other sources that were incorrect. (Example: There is no John M. Curtis, architect in Nevada. John M. Curtis was a California architect! The name is taken from another book that incorrectly quotes his name as the Nevada Architect. Morrill Joseph CURTIS is the actual architect that designed buildings in Nevada.) Also, there is a dearth of pictures and coverage of private homes and mansions. (Space may be the issue here). In some cases, the designation for certain architectural buildings such as certain blocks within the towns is unclear: a map would have helped. Overall, the book is worthwhile, but do not trust its content 100%!

The one and only book on this subject, BUILDINGS OF NEVADA is thoroughly researched and wittily opinionated. It ventures far beyond the familiar territory of Hoover Dam and Las Vegas, to explore boom towns and ghost towns, courthouses and whorehouses.

It will be indispensable for anyone interested in understanding the history and psychology of the Old West. Loaded with helpful maps and photos, it's also a great travel companion for anyone who interested in seeing more of Nevada than the view from I-80.

If you think it's all just casinos and tacky wedding chapels, read this book. Who would have thought Nevada, of all places, had such a rich architectural heritage? Nicoletta covers the history of Nevada, from wickiups to atomic test sites to the latest reinvention of the Las Vegas Strip, and everything in between, with clarity, conciseness, and keen observation. Her descriptions, precise without being dry or overly technical, bring to life not only the buildings but the individuals and communities that built them. I can open this book to any random page and be hooked by a fascinating, unexpected tidbit. The book also contains a helpful glossary of architectural terms, a thorough bibliography, and index. My only complaint is I would have liked even more of Bret Morgan's excellent photographs.

The one and only book on this subject, BUILDINGS OF NEVADA is thoroughly researched and wittily opinionated. It ventures far beyond the familiar territory of Hoover Dam and Las Vegas, to explore boom towns and ghost towns, courthouses and whorehouses.

It will be indispensable for anyone interested in understanding the history and psychology of the Old West. Loaded with helpful maps and photos, it's also a great travel companion for anyone who interested in seeing more of Nevada than the view from I-80.

The geology information was very well done and interesting. I found the book very similar to Nevada Barr's books. The main character is in the wilderness on her own, encounters physical dangers, is badly injured but is able to persevere and is successful in solving the crime and recovering. Too many villians.

Susan Cummins Miller clearly draws upon her expertise and background as a field geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in writing Death Assemblage, a superbly crafted murder mystery set in the mountains west of Pair-a-Dice, Nevada. When a geologist in the final week of her dissertation fieldwork tries to unravel the secrets of the earth's stones, she becomes involved in a deadly cat-and-mouse game of kidnappings, blackmail, and rampant greed. A gripping thriller, exciting and eager to lure the reader into a labyrinth of human deceit, Death Assemblage is enthusiastically recommended reading for dedicated mystery buffs! Attention Hollywood -- this is the stuff from which blockbuster movies can be made!

Susan Cummins Miller brought me hours of pleasure with her anthology of Women writers, "A Sweet Separate Intimacy". Now she has branched into a new field of adventure fiction with a gutsy geologist named Frankie who stirs up a hot desert town. Thanks Ms. Miller for a great read!

Susan Cummins Miller has scored a hit with this one. Frankie MacFarlane, a graduate geologist, is intertwined with the people of Pair-A-Dice, several murders, and the geology of Nevada. This one kept me spellbound for hours and the ending caught me totally by surprise. For a change, this is a totally challenging murder mystery fraught with suspense. Certainly not your run-of-the-mill butler-did-it suspense tale. If you are looking for a great mystery read, try this one. You won't be disappointed.

The stories are disjointed and incomplete. Several leave one without any definite indication of resolution or suggested direction of resolution. The plot never solidifies in some and is barely evident in others. A compiliation of rambling thoughts and occurences, barely connected overall into a cohesive, enjoyable story. Left me very disappointed.

although i'm from califas i appreciate the high volume of chicano lit coming from the texas valley. yanez is a good addition to the growing shelf with this set of stories about life on the el paso/ juarez border. although this territory is not new yanez's vision is. he writes about the loss of innocence and about the people who must now struggle with the metaphysical borders that affect all of us no matter who we are and what our backgound is. happiness, disappointment, joy, grief, family and society are but a few of the pressures and desires that make us human and that the author explores through the triumph and downfall of us all: language.

A few years ago, I read the short story, "Lucero's Mkt.," in Bilingual Review. I didn't know the author but the story moved me with its powerful, poignant portrait of two lost souls: a woman who had lost her mind (known in the neighborhood as, "La Loquita") and Rafael, the lonely, owner of the tiendita. When I started to read Richard Yañez's debut collection, "El Paso del Norte: Stories on the Border," I was delighted when I came upon "Lucero's Mkt." It sat happily nestled among the other borderland stories in this slim, eloquent and vibrant collection. Yañez has a gift: he can bring to life one region in Texas (near the Mexican border) but he doesn't write the same story over and over again. The characters range across the map of Latino experiences: undocumented immigrants, pochos, young, old, male, female, middle-class, indigent. Yañez never falls in the trap known as bathos. He paints an honest picture of life on the border without pulling punches. But he also shows respect for the people he writes about even those who are riddled with imperfections. This is a very fine, accomplished book. I highly recommend it.

While one might simply be satisfied with his intimate and artful texturing of images and people on the border, Yañez takes his stories to a higher level, layering time, place and character with spiritual journeys through struggles that are as specific to the border region as they are universally familiar. Through a palette of characters-a coming of age pre-teen, a widowed tire shop owner, a directionless and embittered high school graduate, and a half-sane woman on welfare, Yañez captures the dignity of a community by providing his characters with an equal amount of fallibility and promise. Throughout these stories humor is as ever-present as sadness, and in the end, Yañez consistently leaves us with subtle messages of hope.

Couldn't resist the musical reference, as it's apt for this amazing novel. Look: there are plenty of books out there -- thousands, in fact -- that seem more concerned with exhibiting the subtleties of craft than actually affecting the emotions of the reader. The Greyhound God ain't that kind of book. It's beautifully written, deeply felt, quite funny, but without one whit of post-modern "irony." I've read the book three times and each time I found myself entering into the world of Luke Rivers, the loss of his family, the tragedy that spurs this loss, his journey across America, and his strange, wonderful canine obsession. The book is one of those rare accomplishments -- a journey of self-discovery that feels real and revelatory. Readers deserve this kind of compassion. Period.

For those who like literary novels, this is one of the best ones on the market right now. Great writing, great story by a talented new author. It's a novel that makes you think and makes you question. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and getting to know Luke Rivers. I can't wait till Keith Lee Morris comes out with another novel.

For those who like literary novels, this is one of the best ones on the market right now. Great writing, great story by a talented new author. It's a novel that makes you think and makes you question. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and getting to know Luke Rivers. I can't wait till Keith Lee Morris comes out with another novel.

Great book by a new author. The Greyhound Gods vivid language creates a gripping story of the struggle for self-discovery by Luke Rivers,it's main character. Luke searches for meaningful answers in his world beset by huge questions. A real page-turner that will hold you to the end.

I bought this book while taking a fiction workshop taught by Lee Barnes, curious about his published work. It was a great decision. The story never slows and takes the reader from the old streets of Las Vegas to the mountains of Montana. Peter grows a lot from a kid until a strong, compassionate adult. Barnes did a wonderful job turning his characters into real people. And overall wonderful story.

I am a Las Vegas junkie and as such purchased this book on Amazon. I mean, who couldn't purchase a book with such a cool cover.

Unfortunately, I was hoping to read a real tour-de-force about Vegas; its people, its energy.... and particularly, to get a huge dose of vintage Vegas. Although all of these elements are present to varying degrees, the story is a bit too conventional, and the characters a bit too cardboard, for me to get really excited.

That being said, it is very much in the "coming of age" (Bildungsroman) genre -- transplanted to Vegas. Kind of Dickensian. A little TOO much so. It is very self-consciously literate, culminating in the wince-inducing exchanges between the Casino Boss and the protagonist over "that fella Gatsby." Catch my drift?

I judged a book by it's cover, and picked this off the shelf at my local library.

And I am so glad that I did.

A powerful, engaging coming-of-age story that eloquently details the story of two families tied together by history, love, responsibility and success. Although the twists and turns are occasionally predictable, the imagery and characters make up for it. Definitely recommended.

H. Lee Barnes has written a novel--at times engaging and at times disturbing but at all times interesting--about a boy's coming of age in 1960s Las Vegas. Peter Elkins, son of a woman infected by wanderlust, is taken in by a casino king, Willy Bobbins, who offers him a chance to take his place as the owner of the Lucky, a downtown gaming house. Peter, however, must deal with the vicious and chaotic elements of Vegas culture, as well as the vicious and chaotic members of Bobbins's family, in his pursuit to discover himself. Barnes skillfully blends together elements of Fitzgerald's _Gatsby_, Conrad's _Heart of Darkness_, Dickens's _Bleak House_ and _Great Expectations_, and the biblical story of Moses to give the story its scope and direction, and his attention to the details of the Las Vegas landscape--both inside and outside of the casinos--will delight those who are familiar with the city. Careful readers will also see Barnes borrow from his own Viet Nam short story "Tunnel Rat" to give measure to the chaos that dominates the story: if Viet Nam is Chaos, and Willy's Montana ranch is Heaven on Earth, then Las Vegas strikes an uneasy balance somewhere between. Peter Elkins also falls somewhere between--a good man who nevertheless commits questionable actions--and he finds a peaceful life only when he can extract himself from the extremes of the landscapes that have shaped him.

An entertaining book, fairly well written, no hypo-technical jargon for which archaeologists are well known...and for that I am thankful. Very adequate photographs of the artifacts, good descriptions. Includes short fictional accounts of what may have transpired in each saloon, based on the artifacts found. My only critical points on this book are these: one i would expect a hardbound books of some size, for the price of over 21 bucks and this is a softbound, very small and short book of 166 pages not counting the exhaustive notes, so there is not much bang for the buck. Secondly, the mishmash of the various saloons and excavations is confusing in the book, the author switches from one saloon excavation to another time after time, so that you are never sure exactly where you are. Not exactly the flowing words of Ivor Noel Hume, but still a nice book, thus my four star rating.

Boomtown Saloons puts a humane and inclusive face on Old West culture. It was refreshing to see that there was more to life in Virginia City than Hollywood's interpretations.

This well written, informative, and entertaining book which should be a must read for anyone interested in the Old West.

Written by anthropology professor and American West historical archaeology specialist Kelly J. Dixon, Boomtown Saloons is an exciting account of the excavation and analysis of four nineteenth-century Virginia City, Nevada saloon sites. Dixon personally participated the excavation projects, and offers a firsthand view of the evidence, and what its analysis tells us about the people and society of Virginia City well over a century ago. From the style of saloon architecture to reconstructed menu items, saloon serving ware, vices and amusements that saloons offered, and much more, Boomtown Saloons is a cutting-edge delve into the fine nuances of what archaeology can tell us about America's past.

This is a nice reference source for general geologic information on Sierra Nevada. A definite improvement over the last edition, worth the replacement cost. Too bulky for a field guide unless you like spending your outing buried in a book, but is a great size for student use in class. The breadth of topics is excellent, and material is up to date (not all books available are). For anyone who needs exposure to Sierra Nevada geology, this is a good supplement to the Harden Book

However titillating this book never quite addressed what I'd hoped to find. I was disappointed that there wasn't much 'geology' in the book other than nice descriptions of how gold wound up where it did and how Half Dome, El Cap, etc. were shaped. On the other hand, it's great for the history of geological exploration and mining in the area (including political intrique between John Muir and 'official' geologists.) Other virtues include lists of noteworthy geological features and great maps and photos.

Three decades ago geologist Mary Hill wrote a handbook to the Sierra Nevada's geologic history and it became the standard guide. The aptly named author has now extensively revised her book. It's an armchair traveler's delight and remains an authoritative guide that will well serve a new generation of hikers, campers, and explorers.

"Geology of the Sierra Nevada: Revised Edition" ($19.95 in full-color paperback from University of California Press) contains almost 200 illustrations, including photographs of rock forms and maps showing where to find them. Hill thanks Bill Guyton, professor emeritus of geosciences at Chico State University, "for his careful reading" of the new manuscript and draws on the research he published in "Glaciers of California" (1998). Guyton distinguished between glaciers and smaller "glacierets" and counted 99 glaciers in the Sierra Nevada and 398 glacierets. Hill notes that "the Sierra Nevada has a lot of glaciers, all of them small. If you are looking for the giants of the Great Ice Age, you will have to be content with their spoor."

The book is divided into two sections. The first offers a "do-it-yourself rock identification key." A series of maps divides the Sierra Nevada into regions and shows where to find prominent rock formations in each area. The first map, mostly of eastern Butte County, locates "conglomerate" ("rock ... made up of grains 2 mm or more in diameter, together with coarser fragments") along Big Chico Creek. You can see shale in the Dry Creek area and lava flow and basalt on Table Mountain.

The second part is the narrative, which takes new research into account. In the last few years, she writes, "the Sierra has been put through the plate tectonics intellectual filter, which has told us how the mountains might have been created, and why they are where they are."

The book also expands its coverage of "human exploration of the Sierra Nevada, not just by geologists" but by others as well.

Here you'll find the story of "the first overland party of settlers to attempt to cross the Sierra. ... The group came to be known as the Bartleson-Bidwell party, as it included two men of leadership mold, John Bartleson and John Bidwell, destined to become eminent in what was to be the 31st U.S. state." Here also is the story of "Snowshoe" Thompson, a Norwegian who for two decades, "beginning in 1856, ... carried the mail across the Sierra Nevada from Placerville, California, to Genoa, Nevada (then called Mormon Station), using long skis (then called 'snowshoes') of his own making."

But Hill's great love is the land itself, the "nervous" Sierra, and her account of the devastating Owens Valley earthquake in 1872 tells not only of human destruction but notes that "the Sierra Nevada itself was severely wracked." She quotes John Muir's eyewitness account: "Shortly after sunrise a low, blunt, muffled rumbling, like a distant thunder, was followed by another series of shocks, which ... made the cliffs and domes tremble like jelly, and the big pines and oaks thrill and swish and wave their branches with startling effect."

At the end of the book, a "coda" reflects on geologic time and human time. "Time is all we have," she writes, "and it behooves us to spend it wisely. Some say that the time spent in the mountains is not subtracted from our allotted three-score-and-ten. So cherish the Sierra, and it will generously reward you."

Copyright 2006 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

I found the title of this book to be a bit misleading, as Roger McGrath's research in the book involves violence commited by much more than just gunfighters, highwaymen and vigilantes. I was also surprised to find the research to be concentrated soley on two boom towns on the Nevada/California border. But the research is so deep and so thorough, you can come away with a very good idea of what kind of violence was present in that time and place. McGrath then uses that research to compare the violence found in an 1800's frontier town with the violence we encounter in cities of our present time. These comparisons, which he brings out at the very end of the book, were very enlightening and thought provoking, and made the book well worth my time to read.

This book opened my eyes to what life on the western frontier was really like. Forget current media fictionalizations, the frontier was not a shooting gallery. No handsome stranger rides into to town to save the cowering inhabitants from evil. The crooks and crooked politics are all there, just like they are today. The sheriff was not always the stalwart defender of the law, in fact he sometimes had business interests to protect.

McGrath offers a carefully documented narrative of the day to day goings on during the gold rush. The data is from public records and the fill-in is from newspaper archives. A detailed yet readable account of frontier life. Far better than any cowboy novel, this is the real west.

Steve Hurst

Just a few days ago, I received my latest copy of THE NEW AMERICAN magazine and found an excellent article in it by Roger D. McGrath titled, "MAKING OUR SCHOOLS SAFE." This edition of the fine current events periodical was inspired by the terrible Virginia Tech campus shooting. McGrath wrote, "For several decades now, I have said that every 'gun control' law should be titled a 'Criminal Empowerment Act,' . . . Reality demonstrates that it is all well and good that sheep pass laws requiring vegetarianism, but until the wolves circling the flock agree, those laws don't mean a thing." His article made me realize how remiss I have been in failing to write, until now, a review for his outstanding book GUNFIGHTERS, HIGHWAYMEN & VIGILANTES.

McGrath's publication was used as the textbook for a very popular course he taught on American West history at the University of California, Los Angeles, while I was a full-time employee on that campus. I purchased my copy at the ASUCLA Student's Store in 1990, and I have gone back to reread sections from it numerous times over the years as GUNFIGHTERS, HIGHWAYMEN & VIGILANTES examines my favorite American epoch and it raises scholarly historical research to an absolute art form! Sifting through innumerable newspapers, as well as court records, jail registers, and journal entries from that time, McGrath fashions a nearly comprehensive account of the violent goings-on in the Nineteenth Century California mining camps of Aurora and Bodie. (In its time, Bodie was considered to be perhaps the wildest of all Wild West towns. So pervasive was its reputation in the territory for rowdyism that stories of "The Bodie Badman" were legendary, and it is rumored that one little girl upon learning that her parents were about to move the family to Bodie wrote in her diary, "Goodbye God, we're going to Bodie." The town is now a fabulous Historical State Park in a condition of arrested decay - a real "must-see" for any fan of the American West!)

In the Preface to his book, McGrath asks, "Was the frontier really all that violent? What was the nature of the violence that did occur? Were frontier towns more violent than cities in the East? Has America inherited a violent way of life from the frontier? Was the frontier more violent than the United States is today? This book attempts to answer these questions and others about violence and lawlessness on the frontier and to do so in a new way. Whereas most authors have drawn their conclusions about frontier violence from the exploits of a few notorious badmen and outlaws and from some of the more famous incidents and conflicts, I have chosen to focus on two towns that I think were typical of the frontier - the mining frontier specifically - and to investigate all forms of violence and lawlessness that occurred in and around those towns."

McGrath's investigation consumed several years and exhausted every available source, and "The results say much about America's frontier heritage and offer some real surprises - several long-cherished notions about frontier violence are thoroughly repudiated while other widely held beliefs, long suspected of being mythical, are demonstrated to be well founded in fact." In the process of learning about the "real" Old West, we meet lawmen and outlaws, cowboys and Indians, highwaymen and petty thieves, soiled doves and gamblers, miners and claim-jumpers, brawlers and gunfighters, vigilance committees and law-and-order associations, pistol-packing women and a brilliant one-armed lawyer who never lost a case.

Along with saloon keeper George Hand's authentic and humorous Old West Arizona diary, Whiskey, Six-Guns and Red-Light Ladies: George Hand's Saloon Diary, Tucson, 1875-1878, and Mark Twain's hilariously exaggerated firsthand account of Old West Nevada, Roughing It (Mark Twain Library) -- the funniest book I've ever read! -- Roger McGrath's more sober and scholarly GUNFIGHTERS, HIGHWAYMEN & VIGILANTES ranks as "The Best Of The West" on printed page. But that's not to say that McGrath's book is an entirely humorless affair. In the chapter titled "Rough And Rowdy", for instance, we learn of a "Bogus Billy The Kid" and of Mike "Man Eater" McGowan:

Even an impostor made a name for himself among the ranks of Bodie's fistfighters. On a Thursday night in 1882, "a rough looking fellow" entered a saloon and announced to the score of patrons that he was Billy the Kid and that he could stand any man in the room on his head. This boast caused half of the men in the saloon to retreat through the back door. "The balance of the select company of tax payers and Christian statesmen," said the Bodie Standard, "advanced on the bogus Billy the Kid, and when he struck the sidewalk it sounded as though Berliner had hit a base drum. When the man got up he explained that his name was simply John Smith and that his father went by the same name." [page 187]

The most notorious of Bodie's brawlers was Mike McGowan, known as the Man Eater. McGowan had earned his sobriquet in Virgina City, where he delighted in chomping on the ears and noses of his foes. He obviously received his share of defeats, however, because his head was described as having been "beaten all out of shape." ... In Bodie, he managed to chomp on Sheriff Peter Taylor's legs, chase a man down Main Street with a butcher knife, break a pitcher over a waiter's head, threaten to chew off the justice of the peace's ears, eat a stray bulldog, and engage in several fistfights. The Man Eater was finally given a choice of a long jail term or exile from Bodie. He chose the latter and wound up back in Virginia City, where he was arrested for vagrancy. "This must be a mistake on the part of the authorities," said the Bodie Standard, "for Mike has a visible means of support. He has an upper and lower row of teeth." [page 187]

I guess this goes to show that EVERY century has had its "Man-Eating" MIKE. And here we thought there was something unique about our own "Evander Holyfield-Eating" MIKE Tyson.

Gloria Totoricagüena's Identity, Culture, and Politics in the Basque Diaspora is a great introduction to the understanding of Basque diaspora from a multi-disciplinary approach -a somehow overlooked area of Basque studies by the international academia and surprisingly by the homeland scholars-. It analyzes the formation of the diaspora as an historical phenomenon for the over five hundred years, reveals the multi-directional interconnectedness and networks (from a familiar to an institutional level) among diaspora Basque communities and between those and the homeland, and describes the changing nature of the meaning of being Basque from transnational and deterritorialized perspectives. The book focuses, from a historical perspective, on the physical, emotional and psychological interconnectedness among diaspora Basques and the Basque region, while emphasizing the current Basque Government-diaspora institutional relations, promoted increasingly since the return of democracy to Spain and the early 1980s-. It also pays special attention to the influence of the Basque homeland nationalist ideology on the reformulation of Basque identity on the diaspora communities, specifically in the period of the Basque-Government-in-exile between the 1940s and the late-1970s. In sum, Identity, Culture, and Politics in the Basque Diaspora is a comprehensive ground-breaking work which lays the foundation for more theoretical and empirical comparative research in Basque studies in the international terrain as well as in the Basque Country and which will attract not only an expert reader, but also a wide audience eager to learn aspects of Basque history, culture, and politics that until now have been to some extent ignored.

"The Sespe Wild" is an anthology of reflections on life and life issues in the Sespe river. Each chapter focuses on an animal that lives or used to live around the Sespe. There are also chapters talking about attempted dams, oil drilling, and rock art left by the Chumash Indians. The book can be read in installments, or, if you have the time, in one sitting.

Monsma is a gifted storyteller, and traces the individual histories of each aspect in a way that makes you want to root for the cause of conservation. At the the same time, he presents both sides of each issue fairly, and never comes down clearly either way. This can be a challenge for the reader, particularly if you're looking for a more black and white discussion of environmental issues. Personally, I loved that aspect, as it left me asking questions of myself. Perhaps that is the biggest lesson in this book: You ask important questions, and as you go through life, part of the answer is revealed, but only enough to prompt more questions.

On a side note, readers with a Christian background may chuckle at some of verbal puns that hint at time spent in Sunday School, but for the rest, it's a soulful account of how a place so small and almost insignificant can be filled with life that continues to thrive in the midst of contant challenge. Monsma is obviously passionate about nature, and here he shares it with us.

Drawing on his personal experiences of backpaking in the Sespe Wilderness over many years, Monsma revels in the beauty of the landscape, and its bird and animal life. His descriptions of early mornings in the wilderness are compelling; they make me want to reach for my backpack and hiking boots and head out to the backcountry.

Drawing on extensive scholarship, he tells the chequered history of the Sespe and the story of its preservation only 50 miles from the Los Angeles metropolis. Describing the threats from oil drilling, dam building and suburban development, he not only points out the short-sightedness of current energy and development policies, but also shows the remarkable ability of the wilderness to regenerate itself and obliterate the traces of earlier intruders.

He uses rhetorical figures such as the native american shamans, tricksters and bear-men to introduce different ways of seeing nature and connecting it to everyday urban life. The traces of zen buddhism and Carlos Castaneda appear hokey at the beginning, but become an integral part of the book's structure.

By the end this is the kind of book that makes you not only want to visit the wilderness, but also makes you see under the surface of urban life. Every freeway drainage ditch, patch of scrub, and visiting hummingbird comes alive with layers of meaning.

It provides some great information about the distribution of the various silkworm moth species and how some of them have evolved in recent history, and how some of these events came to pass naturally.

Told with the narrative fluidity of a memoir, Moth Catcher: An Evolutionist's Journey Through Canyon and Pass is an amazing look into the scientific research of author Michael M. Collins. Moth Catcher introduces the reader to a fascinating canyon and pass environment in Sierra Nevada that is what geneticists call a "hybrid zone" for silk moths. In the hybrid zone, two species of silk moths interbreed to produce fertile offspring - unlike lab-bred hybrids between the same two species. These naturally occurring hybrid populations serve as unique, non-reproducible laboratories in nature, offering an exceptional opportunity to gain greater insight into how evolution itself operates. A handful of color photographic plates illustrate this exceptional account of the hidden wonders of one of nature's smaller species. Accessible to readers of all backgrounds, Moth Catcher is as highly recommended to the lay person with a budding interest in natural science as it is to professionals curious to hear a firsthand account of fieldwork and its astonishing results.

Michael Collins' book very effectively bridges the gap between the passions of a lover of nature and the frontiers of scientific discovery - in new evolutionary thought.

The book is introduced with a beautiful poem written by his daughter, who says so much in a few chosen words.