“Each volume [in the Animal series] combines lavish illustration with incisive and often quite witty text. . . . Passionate and brilliant.”

New York Sun

“The latest monograph [Rhinoceros] in the winning Animal series—truly natural histories, each title a wide-ranging look at a single creature, replete with splendid illustrations—is perhaps the finest yet. Like its predecessors, this volume alternately informs, delights, moves, and astonishes.”

Atlantic

“A lively and lovely series. . . . This delightful series gives us animals as both alien and familiar. . . . An exhilarating, often astonishing and sometimes moving series of monographs.”

Globe and Mail

“Reaktion’s wonderful series of little paperbacks about animals, which now stretches all the way from Ant to Whale. The books are compact and neatly designed, and the tone is always passionate and personal. . . . Packed with trivial facts, amusing insights and lovely pictures.”

Guardian

“A bold and fascinating series from Reaktion . . . all are full of gorgeous graphics . . . all these books give a strong sense of the depth and complexity of the emotions we invest in animals.”

Independent on Sunday

“The series . . . calls itself ‘a new kind of animal history.’ It is, splendidly, even brilliantly, so. I have nothing but praise for it.”

Spectator

“The sometimes unsettling encounter with a real flesh-and-blood specimen of an animal—or, for that matter, the absence of one—is a recurring literary conceit at the beginning of many volumes of the series. . . . In each of the books, the writers frequently mine the nervous roles of tiptoeing birdwatchers or greedy hungers lying in wait for the big game that may never appear. Prosaically, the device . . . underscores that the books in the series are above all essays, and personal ones at that, penned less frequently by professional animal specialists than by interested scholars from literary and history fields; their tone eschews the dry cant and summary overview of the encyclopedia.”

Chronicle Review

“The books are arguably some of the most original and accomplished written about animals, and the erudition displayed throughout is impressive.”

Ibis

“Part cultural history, part folklore, part history of science and reference books, these works gracefully traverse time, place and disciplinary approaches to explore a single animal’s place in human history. Replete with images and written in an accessible style, they are sure to appeal to a range of audiences.”

British Journal for the History of Science