Ocean

From Barnes & Noble

Like its predecessors, this addition to DK's annual coffee-table pictorial series stuns browsers to silence with its spectacular photographs of underwater life and landscapes. With lavish spreads, catalogs, maps, and texts, Ocean lays out the many splendors of the sea; from coast and seashores to the open ocean with its dazzling diversity of marine life. This 500-page book includes the latest development in ocean exploration and photography. A thoroughly seductive package.

Library Journal

This massive volume, published in association with New York's American Museum of Natural History and featuring an introduction by marine explorer Fabien Cousteau, is divided into four sections comprising a general overview of the physical and chemical features of the ocean; ocean environments such as seashore, shallow seas, and open ocean; ocean life; and an atlas of the oceans. The nine contributors to the volume (most are British) include marine biologists, paleontologists, and natural history and life sciences writers. Many pages combining text, photos, and diagrams with great amounts of information, including small maps and statistical tables, are interspersed with dazzling double-spread color photos that also bear textual material. A glossary, index, and separate atlas index are included. Ease in locating material for ready reference in the various sections is provided by colored right-hand margins. Bottom Line Topics such as bioluminescence, wind farms, and white sharks are treated more fully here than in Dorrik Stow's Encyclopedia of the Oceans (Oxford Univ.). However, Stow's volume is about half the size while having more text in relation to illustrative material and providing an excellent overview for the general reader. The two volumes thus complement rather than compete with each other. Suitable for high school, public, and academic libraries.-Judith B. Barnett, Pell Marine Science Lib., Univ. of Rhode Island, Kingston Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.