Shark

Description

The shark's basic design was perfected by Mother Nature 100 million years ago, and she has been mass-producing them ever since. The shark is so superbly suited to its purpose that it has outlived the dinosaur, the mastodon, the saber-tooth tiger, and the woolly mammoth. In Shark, Dean Crawford explores the natural and cultural history of a creature that has a prominent place in mythology, the imagination, and even religion.

Dean Crawford is Visiting Associate Professor of English at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, and is the author of The Lay of the Land (1987).

Crawford explains well the variety (454 species) and wondrous biology of sharks (the great white has electrical sensors that can detect a heartbeat); traces sharks nicely through myth and fiction, holding in view Moby-Dick, Jaws and the novels of Hemingway; and outlines the politics of aquaria and shark-fin soup ... The pictures are breathtaking, too ... The Guardian A beautiful book about sharks? Yes, Shark, by Dean Crawford is one of a series of gorgeous, small format animal tomes ... This 150-page shark primer has lovely color plates on almost every page of art-quality stock, and the writing is good, too ... Crawford's the Alan Dershowitz of the finny deep. I loved this book. -- Alex Beam Boston Globe Shark is a completely perfect book about sharks ogle that elegant cover and unadorned title, both as sleek as their subject limpidly written by Dean Crawford and speckled with striking photos and artwork. - Austin 360