The Book of Snakes: A Life-Size Guide to Six Hundred Species from around the World Hardcover – October 15, 2018

Fascinating Book about the more than six hundred species of snakes. I have always been a true animal lover, and that means all animals, not just the fluffy and/or cuddly ones like kittens and puppies. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in snakes, reptiles or animals in general. This book has wonderful and informative text and beautiful photos of hundreds of different snakes. Anyone interested will really enjoy it.

This book is a treasure! Beautiful from the first moment I held it in my hands. Even underneath the dust jacket it is pretty.I just started exploring this gorgeous tomb, but I am sure I will spend many wide-eyed hours discovering all the 600 snake species described. After a few pages of thorough introductory information about snakes, each species is shown on one page, and each is accompanied by a life-sized photo. In many cases this is a photo of the head. Otherwise the book would have mammoth dimensions. ;-) But there are also smaller versions of the photos, to see the whole of the animal described. Each snake also comes with information about location, size, habitat, diet, etc. and a short description. Those who are familiar with Mark O'Shea's other books will know this to be useful and well researched information.And for those crazy book lovers like me: Yes, it even feels and smells great. ;-)

Not only are there head shots of over 600 snakes, but pictures of the whole snake and a map reflecting where they are found! For a young man who loves snakes, he should be able to look up and learn about any snake he is interested in and I have supplied him with many other snake books!Lesley Haynie

This book features perhaps the most diverse and up to date selection of snake species profiled in a book, with references to many other similar species to the ones profiled. Of special note it doesn't skimp on groups that are usually poorly represented in books, such as threadsnakes and seasnakes (a typical snake guide only showing a few species of each).If was to offer any criticism, it would be that some of the "actual size" photos appear faded or blurry, at least to my eyes, and don't capture the true beauty and crisp look of the actual snake. If I was to speculate, in some cases perhaps this is due to better photos simply not being available of poorly known species, or perhaps a consequence of editing out a photo's original background and/or changing its dimensions. Regardless, it does little to detract from the enjoyment of the book.I'd also caution readers that the "actual size" images can be misleading. As far as I can tell they appear to represent merely average-sized examples (as the lengths given for a given species show, snakes of any species vary widely in size depending on age and individual), and probably also don't always reflect the actual size of the individual snake in the picture (some appear to be photos of young animals for instance). I'll be happy to be corrected if I'm wrong, but the book doesn't appear to explain anywhere on how to interpret the "actual size" aspect of the images.

And quite well-done. I have read most of O'Shea's books, with his treatise on the Snakes of Papua New Guinea being my favorite until now- he has truly outdone himself here- For the most part, he adheres to modern phylology and taxonomy standards, and covers all families and subfamilies here, with a great deal many that I had never heard of- and I am an avid herpetologist/herpetoculturist! I can't reccommend this book highly enough! It is well written, easily read, and covers a breadth heretofore not covered by such a book. The diverity of the serpent world is revealed in accurate detail and all it's bright colors and patterns.... Truly worth every penny.

We bought this for our 12-year-old daughter who is big into herpetology. She was thrilled to read about so many species of snakes that she doesn’t hear about regularly on her favorite YouTube reptile shows. She takes a highly academic approach to her interest in snakes, so this book is a perfect fit.

in real life, the majority of snakes are very deadly. Most aren't safe until you come within striking range (if you get to close)

My husband use to collect snakes when he was in the Army. He enjoyed taking care of them and learning about them. He thoroughly enjoy this book.

I loved the quality of the book, the printing is great and the photos are bright and detailed. The amount of species shown in the book is huge, but I was a bit disappointed with the fact that the crotalus genus was not very developed with just a few species shown.

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This book is amazing. The book is totally fine printed, I like the colourful pictures. In the beginning of the book you can finde some main information about snakes (35 pages in total). After that you can finde the species themselves. Every snake has the main informations like they shown in the product pictures. You also can search for an special snake, at the end of the book you can finde a list with every snake and the page where you can find it. If you’re interested in snakes I think it’s a really good book.