Review by Choice Review
Decades of environmental education have generated some successes, at least with regard to the bat. Bats are no longer seen as evil, disease-carrying vermin (although isolated cases of undereducation exist). Many people now like bats. The virtues of bats are proclaimed by ardent supporters in dozens of books, each with breathless text and beautiful photographs (often the same photographs appear in multiple books). Adams (Univ. of Northern Colorado) has included all of this standard fare, with the addition of a guide featuring more than 200 entries to the "gray" literature (government publications and reports), morphological measurements of individual bats (key to identifying some species) collected throughout the area, sonographs for each species, extinction threat rankings, and color maps of geographical ranges. More careful editing would have improved the text, but the author's enthusiasm for the animals comes through. Though of limited value to readers outside the Rocky Mountains because of the restricted ranges of the species covered, this book does contain field notes and details of interest to those who are already passionate about bats. Bat-lovers far beyond Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming will enjoy it. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. General readers. G. C. Stevens formerly, University of New Mexico
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
