The Beaver: Natural History of a Wetlands Engineer. Dietland Muller-Schwarze and Lixing Sun. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2003. 192 pp., illus. $35.00 (ISBN 080144098X cloth).

Birds of the Salton Sea: Status, Biogeography, and Ecology. Michael A. Patten, Guy McCaskie, and Philip Unitt. University of California Press, Berkeley, 2003. 393 pp., illus. $65.00 (ISBN 0520235932 cloth).

A Brand New Bird: How Two Amateur Scientists Created the First Genetically Engineered Animal. Tim Birkhead. Basic Books, New York, 2003. 288 pp., illus. $26.00 (ISBN 0465006655 cloth).

Drafting a Conservation Blueprint: A Practitioner's Guide to Planning for Biodiversity. Craig R. Groves. Island Press, Washington, DC, 2003. 420 pp., illus. $35.00 (ISBN 1559639385 paper).

Missing Links: Evolutionary Concepts and Transitions through Time. Robert A. Martin. Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Sudbury, MA, 2003. 303 pp., illus. $34.95 (ISBN 0763721964 paper).

A New Island Biogeography of the Sea of Cortes. Ted J. Case, Martin L. Cody, and Exequiel Ezcurra, eds. Oxford University Press, New York, 2003. 669 pp., illus. $95.00 (ISBN 0195133463 cloth).

Sperm Whales: Social Evolution in the Ocean. Hal Whitehead. University of Chicago Press, 2003. 456 pp., illus. $30.00 (ISBN 0226895181 paper).