The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada (California Academy of Sciences) (California Academy of Sciences) (California Academy of Sciences)
This is an excellent field guide packed with accurate, hand drawn colored illustrations of everything you can imagine, from mushrooms to insects to reptiles.

This is an incredible book on the Sierra Nevada, written and illustrated entirely by Jack Laws, a fantastic naturalist.

We purchased this field guide to take on dayhikes and camping trips in the Sierra's with our 5 yr old daughter. We have thoroughly enjoyed it! It is very easy to use. I looked at many field guides and this one is by far the easiest to use. Small children can become bored easily on a hike. The field guide has made hiking more interesting for our 5 yr old. She finds it great fun to identify new flowers,plants,birds,ect. It delays the inevitable, "Are we there yet?" !

The detail drawing make it easy to identify the plants and wild life.
A great way to learn.

I have at least 10 books specifically on Sierra wildflowers and several field guides. This is the best all-in-one book. It's not too heavy for me to carry on a day hike.

Janice
in the Sierra

John Muir Law's Guide to hiking in the Sierra Nevada is lush with his artistic renditions of all you might see, and want to identify, as you hike this area. Small enough to carry in your back pack, but chock full of helpful information.

This book is stunning!..Beautiful artwork by the author as well as meaningful interpretations of wild life. The author is a gift to natural books as well as his art!

This book is amazing. With all the different species of life.
I'm going to keep it in my car. Some times when we're driving; my husband will say "what kind of bird was that" or "what kind of flower".
It's very imformative and very handy.
Thank you

This field guide is perfect for the hiker and camper or general nature lover who lives near the Sierra Mountain range in central California or who intends to vist that region. The authur has drawn almost all of the animal, flowers,insect and bird life to be found in the Western and eastern Sierra mountain range in beautful color by hand. To identify the various life forms you simply look under the various topies and you no doubt will ID that strange bug or plant. You can trust the author and his work is among the best selling of the genre. This is one of the most readable guides to life in the Sierra's and the artwork is first rate. This little guide is perfect for the rucksack crowd in terms of size and weight. This guide has limited written commitary as the artwork is the key to this field guide. This is a well-designed book, making for effortless page-turning and the writer/artist really get into the detail of the creatures shown. You will enjoy your quick hike much more and will have a dramatic change of atmosphere as you reference the life surrounding you in these mountains of great beauty. I recommend this guide highly.

Wonderful guide. Good information and well drawn pictures. Good guide for California not only the mountains. A useful reference. Highly recommended.

I hate this book. For years I have been telling fellow natural history writers that the field guide model is stagnant, boring and dull, and anyone who wastes his time writing one could be doing something more useful, like picking up trash on the roadside. I have insisted there is nothing new and interesting that can come out of additional field guides -- it has all been done and overdone.
So what happens? This guy Laws comes along and makes me a liar. And even a fool. He does a field guide that sparkles. That identifies everything you run into. That is based on paintings better than I can do. That is organized in a uniquely instinctive way.
And worst of all, that puts together the whole unlikely package with all the charm and humor that Laws expresses in person. That's why I hate this book.
Everybody should buy one to see if they hate it too.

If you live (or visit) the Sierra Nevada's and like nature, this is a must field guide to purchase. Very helpful and well illustrated.

Written and packed with over 2700 full-color illustrations by naturalist and educator John Muir Laws, The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada is a pinpoint-accurate (through rigorous field testing) guidebook to the wide variety of Sierra natural life, including trees, wildflowers, ferns, fungi, lichens, fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, mammals, insects, and other small animals. Over 1700 species are described with indications of their behavior, adaptations, and interactions with other species. Additional information not found in other wildlife guides includes notes on animal tracks, seasonal star charts, weather patterns, cloud formations and much more. Highly recommended; if you bring only one flora and fauna identification guide to the Sierra Nevada, it should definitely be The Laws Field Guide!

Every little boy or girl who ever took home a shell from the shore or an acorn from the forest or a flower from the field will fall in love with this wonderful book.

The website of " John Muir Laws " is bright and cheery and perfectly reflects this amazing book. Laws looks at the world with amazement. "I am constantly amazed by things. The diversity of chipmunks, for example." And, he has the skills of a poet and an artist that communicate his amazement onto the pages. Take a look at his drawings of spiders either in the book or online -- you'll be convinced.

Six years of amazement and work, 366 pages, 2,800 illustrations, each painted by Laws. The new field guide begins with "Small Fungi Growing on Wood" (specifically, Calocera cornea, the staghorn jelly fungus) and ends with stars (the night sky at winter solstice, Dec. 22). It includes 1,700 species of flowers, trees, bugs, frogs, snails, skunks, birds, fish, rodents.

It's the height of romance: a lone amateur, now 41 years old, lives in a $600 apartment in San Francisco and spends years hiking in the Sierras, painting mushrooms and moles and the Milky Way. His publisher, Malcolm Margolin, founder of Heyday Books in Berkeley, a not-for-profit, puts it exactly right: "this book was done by somebody who is stunned by the beauty of the world."

The Sierras are wonderful to hike in. They are wonderful to dream about. There is no better guide to the Sierras whether you are in your boots or in your easy chair. Buy it, hike it and dream.

The title of my review pretty much says it. When this book first came out, I just thought "Wow! I wish I knew all that stuff!"

I already knew Laws' work from his thin book on Sierra Birds (largely or entirely included in the present field guide). It is slim, has fewer species than most and almost no text (owing no doubt to Laws legendary dyslexia), but time and again I find that his thin book was the easiest to use and most likely to allow me to find and ID a bird.

This is just the next ten steps - reptiles, bushes, flowers, birds, bugs (lots of bugs), mosses, and even constellations. If I were going to recommend just one book for hiking the Sierra, this would definitely be it.

A ton of useful information on a range of subjects (plants, animals, mushrooms, insects, weather, tracks, scat, star charts, etc.). Beautifully illustrated and easy to navigate. The text snippets have a very personal, conversational, at times even humorous tone, which make it a pleasure to consult. At 17.5oz (496g), it's a little too heavy in my opinion for backpacking, but a good companion for all other occasions. The knowledge, thought and passion that went into this publication really burst off the pages.

This is a gem, a comprehensive field guide to Sierra flora and fauna. John Muir Laws spent many summers drawing from life in all corners of the Sierra, and the results are enchanting. The book includes insects, tracks, stars, scat, and mushrooms as well as plants, birds, and animals. Though there isn't space in this slim volume for detailed information on each organism, the tidbits of natural history trivia scattered throughout are tantalizing. I take this one guide on every hike, and it rarely fails me. The color tab system makes it easy to find things quickly without searching the index. When I get back, I can refer to other guidebooks like Sierra Nevada Natural History for more information.

This is an outstanding field guide! Great color drawings, and great presentation. It makes it very easy for anyone to identify almost anything in the Sierra Nevada.

John Muir Laws imparts a stunning resonance to all he paints. His work is thoughtful, complete, and inspired. Your fun with this book will be absolutely never ending. My granddaughters, my eighty year old father, my best friend, all LOVE this book. Imagine a guide that includes everything from constellations to the nest forms of miniature wasps to the most showy birds and fish! Just leafing through the book makes me feel blessed to live in the Sierras. Elisa Stancil

Imagine hiking with a wise old professor of natural history, a young companion still bubbling with enthusiasm at the joys of nature, and a talented artist with a gift for capturing it all in paint. That is what hiking with the Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada is like. Virtually everything visible that lives in the Sierra Nevada and even far beyond can be found here, and when it is too dark or stormy to see living things, there are star charts and explanations of the weather. The guide is conveniently arranged into groups of organisms, from fungi through plants and animals, including mammal scats and tracks. Species that are likely to be confused are shown near each other with distinguishing features pointed out. The author, John Muir Laws, also provides frequent short lessons in natural history. What makes the book special, of course, are the 2700 paintings by Laws, many so detailed that one has to look closely to see they are not photographs. And all of this is in a 366-page book that fits easily into a day pack and is so well constructed that it will survive the many years of steady use that it will surely get.

Absolutely the best field guide I've encountered. Besides being compact and easy to use, the illustrations are absolutely stunning. This book is ideal as a quick reference for either the backyard naturalist or the avid backpacker. After buying this book you'll quickly become addicted to flora and fauna identification!

This is a fantastic book. Organized as a useful field guide, the illustrations are so good looking you will want to keep it on your coffee table for your guests to flip through. But don't! Take it with you on a hike and use it to learn more about what you otherwise might walk right past.