Over the last few months, I bought and read several books about dinosaurs. This book, Thomas Holtz and Luis Rey's Dinosaurs: The Most Complete, Up-to-Date Encyclopedia, was my best purchase by far. It is wonderfully written, wonderfully organized, and the illustrations are lovely. Not only does Holtz have a gift for introducing and describing the standard features of dinosaur paleontology in clear and accessible prose, he does a fabulous job of explaining the REASONS why paleontologists have arrived at their conclusions. In other words, in addition to learning about dinosaurs, a novice reader will likely walk away with a greater understanding of how one performs sound scientific reasoning.
Many reviewers have pointed out that the isn't exactly pitched to younger children. That's probably correct. But of course, books are never "one size fits all." As a middle-aged adult wanting to learn about dinosaurs for the first time, this book was ideal for me. But I'm confident that a bright and motivated 10-year old will find the text equally enriching.
For readers who might struggle with this sort of comprehensive and detailed treatment of dinosaurs -- for very young readers in particular -- I recommend Lessem and Tempesta's National Geographic Kids Ultimate Dinopedia: The Most Complete Dinosaur Reference Ever. It's a more straightforward encyclopedia, primarily made up of two-page entries on various dinosaur genera: usually a very nice illustration on the left page, and on the right page, a short and manageable text highlighting some interesting factoids about the genus in question. There are some weird errors in the Lessem and Tempesta text -- for example, they mislabel the parts of the dinosaur hip -- and the factoids sometimes seem a bit randomly selected. But it's a nevertheless a good text for particularly young readers who need less text and more pictures.
I also compared Holtz's book with Paul Barrett and Raul Martin's National Geographic Dinosaurs, David Burnie's The Kingfisher Illustrated Dinosaur Encyclopedia, and Gregory Paul's The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs (Princeton Field Guides). These books are quite fine in their own way, but I felt they all fell short when compared to Holtz's Dinosaurs.
The Barrett and Martin book contained a lot less information, in every respect really, than Holtz. My main reason for purchasing Barrett's book was the illustrations by Raul Martin. They are just gorgeous; more pleasing than Luis Rey's illustrations for the Holtz book, in my own view, despite the fact that Martin's Troodons and Velociraptors were, alas, completely unfeathered. Similarly, I learned that Gregory Paul, the author of the Princeton Field Guide, is one of the most influential paleoartists of the last 30 or so years and I very much love the extensive illustrations of dinosaur skeletons he included in his book. However, Paul uses a system for classifying dinosaurs and groups of dinosaurs that is, at least in places, not widely accepted. This fact alone diminished the value of the book for me. But putting that issue aside, it was also not as well organized and as informative (to a novice) as I found the Holtz book to be.
Finally, Burnie's Kingfisher book was probably the most comparable to Holtz in terms of both the amount of content and the type of content. Still, I regularly found Holtz easier to follow, more informative about basic information, and more informative about how paleontologists have arrived at their conclusions (or why they disagree). The Holtz book has the added advantage of being more up-to-date.
In sum, Holtz's book is the best I've seen. It's comprehensive. It is organized extremely well. (In fact, it's not really an encyclopedia in the strict sense. But despite this, it's not necessary to read the text cover to cover; the chapter topics make it is easy for the reader to jump around.) It's up-to-date, with discussions of cladistics and the thesis that dinosaurs are not extinct (birds are dinosaurs). And the artwork by Rey, while not my absolute favorite, is still excellent in most places.
This is the dinosaur book I'd keep if I had to throw away all but one.
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Excellent!
It’s as described. The last owner must have let a kid at it with a purple killer whale stamp but I find the embellishments very cute.
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WentuReviewed in Italy on February 20, 2015
Meraviglioso, entusiasmante, ricchissimo.
- Steve HammondReviewed in the United Kingdom on April 14, 2013
Serious dinosaur science made easy.
