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In recent decades, growing numbers of researchers have been drawn to the rich and highly threatened biotic diversity of the Neotropics, where mammals are among the most difficult animals to observe and study in detail. Mammals of the Neotropics fills the need for a comprehensive, up-to-date survey of existing knowledge of the area's wild mammals, both terrestrial and marine. This first of three planned volumes covers the northern Neotropics, including southern Central America.

John Eisenberg, a leading researcher of Neotropical fauna, begins the volume with a discussion of historical biogeography and contemporary habitats of the northern Neotropics. Each of the chapters that follow presents a mammalian order, with data for all indigenous species. Eisenberg has provided physical descriptions and summaries of range and habitat for nearly 450 species. For those species that have been studied in the field or in captivity, additional notes on natural history are included. For the larger taxa, field keys to help to identify the specimens. Range maps, line drawings, and color plates supplement the text, further aiding identification.

Throughout the book, Eisenberg provides a larger context for the species descriptions. He comments on the diversity of forms within each order, places the Neotropical species in a worldwide geographical perspective, and reviews taxonomic questions and controversies. At the end of each chapter, an extensive bibliography directs readers to related articles on systematics, behavior, ecology, and evolution. Eisenberg concludes with chapters on speciation events and mammalian community ecology.

No comparable account of South and Central American mammals has ever been published in any language. This volume of Mammals of the Neotropics and the forthcoming companion volumes will be an invaluable reference for students and professionals and will help further the research that is so vital to conservation efforts.

Containing more than one-third of the world's bird species, the neotropical region surpasses all other zoogeographic regions in the diversity of its avian fauna. Though the exploration and cataloging stages of ornithology are now virtually complete, new species and undescribed subspecies of birds are still occasionally discovered. In this manual, Emmet R. Blake has drawn on his experience of forty-eight years in the field and laboratory to prepare a comprehensive, detailed, and authoritative synopsis of the avifauna of tropical America as now known.

Martin E. Marty argues that religion in twentieth-century America was essentially shaped by its encounter with modernity. In this first volume, he records and explores the diverse ways in which American religion embraced, rejected, or cautiously accepted the modern world.

"Marty writes with the highest standards of scholarship and with his customary stylistic grace. No series of books is likely to tell us as much about the religious condition of our own time as "Modern American Religion."—Robert L. Spaeth, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"The wealth of material and depth of insight are beyond reproach. This book will clearly stand as an important meteorological guide to the storm front of modernity as it swept Americans into the twentieth century."—Belden C. Lane, Review of Religions

"Whatever one thinks about Marty's theological or philosophical position as a historian, the charm of his friendly circumspective approach to American religious history is irresistible."—John E. Wilson, Theological Studies

"Marty attempts to impose historical order on the divergent ways a century of Americans have themselves tried to find order in their worlds. . . . [He] meets the challenge deftly. . . . It is a book relevant to our time. . . . Engages the heart and mind jointly."—Andy Solomon, Houston Post

Many historical myths are actually false yet psychologically true. The contributors to this volume see myth and reality as complementary elements in the historical record. Myth and Southern History is as much a commentary on southern historiography as it is on the viability of myth in the historical process. Volume 2: The New South offers new perspectives on the North's role in southern mythology, the so-called Savage South, twentieth-century black and white southern women, and the "changes" that distinguish the late twentieth-century South from that of the Civil War era.