Caracolas Marinos del Uruguay, Argentina & Brasil
by Gabriela Bentanour Viglione
2011, published by the author, paper covers with perfect ( glued) binding, 124 pages, page size is about 11 by 16 cm. (4½ by 6¼ inches) Text is in Spanish, each copy is numbered and signed, about 32 page size color plates for species identification, 2 page size color plates showing features of shells, 5 photographic plates in introductory text
This is a surprising book in many ways. It is very well done for a book of this size and the author has done a very good job offering well written descriptions as well as photos of the shells that she has included in this book. This area has a cold water environment and therefore not a great number of species are found here. Still the author has in her check list shells in about 60 families of Gastropods and almost the same number of families in the Bivalves. It would have been great to have a book that included photos and descriptions for all of these shells but only 32 species are shown and described in the book. The descriptions are in Spanish but should not be a problem to any one even slightly familiar with that language and I find the MicroSoft translator as part of their "Bing"© search engine (free to use) helpful when I run into things that I am not familiar with. Given its limitations this is a good little book and it does add a source of information for the shells from this region which is for the most part neglected in other books. One feature that I like very much is the use of captions on the plates to highlight features of the shell that the author wants to call to our attention. As mentioned in the capsule description above this is a limited edition and each copy is numbered and signed by the author. That should add value to the book but no where can I find how many copies of this book were printed. I suspect that it was a very small printing. The copies I have in stock now are numbers 20, 21 and 22. I am hoping that this book will lead to a larger and more comprehensive work in the future.
