Moluscos Terrestris de Cuba
by Jose Espinosa & Jesus Ortega with photographs by Julio Larramendi
2009, Spartacus Foundation & La Sociedad Cubana de Zoologia, printed in Finland, hardcover in laminated boards, 191 pages, 364 color plates through out the text, many are full page size, size is about 9˝ by 11˝ inches (24 by 29.5 cm) , in Spanish
This is a gorgeous book and I think that the photography here is possibly the best live animal photography that I have seen in all of my other titles. It is simply amazing and the book is also an amazing work. Its focus is to introduce us to the numerous families of terrestrial mollusks that live in Cuba. Most of the shells are show alive in their natural habitat in extreme close up. The text (in Spanish) gives us an overview of the shell family, its habitat , the characteristic of these shells and a lot of background information. My Spanish is not good enough to understand the more technical details that the authors have written but from what I can understand it is a carefully written and thoroughly researched book. The authors and the photographer are prominent workers in the scientific field and it is a shame that their names and their works are not well know in the USA. The last section of this book is a check list of 1393 species of landshells found in Cuba Although this is a new book it is going to be very difficult to get copies of it here. The book was originally done and was supposed to be given as a gift to supporters of the Sparticus Foundation to help conserve land in Cuba where the mollusks in this book could survive. It was a very limited printing and apparently some of these copies got into general circulation. I'll do the best that I can do to bring them in but I will not be able to supply them on a regular basis.
