Deserts (National Audubon Society Nature Guides)

This essential guidebook to the North American deserts, one in a distinguished Audubon Society series devoted to continental biomes, contains in outline just about all the natural-history information a desert rat will need in the field. Drawing on the expertise of ornithologists, botanists, mammalogists, herpetologists, and other scientists across the country, editor James MacMahon offers an account of desert ecology, followed by life histories of characteristic flora and fauna, range maps, and illustrations. Of particular interest are MacMahon's notes on Native American uses of indigenous plants and animals. --Gregory McNamee