Antarctica: A Guide To The Wildlife (Bradt Guides) Paperback – September 17, 2013

This book is well organized and covers all you want to know for going/being there. The first part deals just with the places. Of course, the peninsula is well covered but so, also are Ushuaia, the Drake Passage, the South Shetland Islands, the Ross Sea, South Georgia and Falkland Islands. You will want to know the names of all the birds, mammals and so the second half if full of photographs with descriptions and a bit of information on each. Most often birds are shown both in flight and on the ground which can be helpful especially to the novice like me. I especially appreciate this when I return home and am trying to accurately label my own photographs. The seals and walrus all seem to be pictured dry and fluffy and while I'd like to have also one of them wet (again to help me identify my pictures), past experience in other places tells me this isn't going to cause me angst. There are good, simple but detailed enough maps at the very beginning. The authors, both zoologists, covered the different kinds of ice and ice bergs, the politics of Antarctica and finish the book with a short but important discussion about threats to conservation and the current effects of global warming as well as what may be in the future. This is a great little book to take with you. It is a bit on the hefty side but that is because the paper is of such high quality allowing the finest presentation of their wonderful photographs. My copy is the third edition published in 2015 so it is up to date in comments and descriptions. If you want more detail on the science, read Gabrielle Walker's "Antarctica" and James McClintock's "Lost Antarctica": both are great reads.

An excellent guide to Antarctica that covers all the essentials in a terse and well-illustrated package: a brief history of the explorers, geology, plants, and all the wildlife. If you only get one book on Antarctica, this is probably the one.

good book to prepare for trip.

It was excellent, read it prior to my trip and also took it with me to Antarctica. Easy read, excellent narrative re: the wildlife, really informative and should be required reading for anyone interested in Antarctica or planning a trip to the continent.

This is a great guide for a visit to the Antarctic peninsula ....it provides basic information on all of the species we saw plus just enough history to make this book really valuable for a traveler. And it is compact and easy to pack !

There is a lot of information in this book about Antarctica and the illustrations are well done. A definite must for the traveler heading to Antarctica.

Great guide; just returning home and found it easy to read/identify what we saw.

Excellent handy book to use for quick look up of most commonly found animal life