Spiders and Their Kin: A Fully Illustrated, Authoritative and Easy-to-Use Guide (A Golden Guide from St. Martin's Press)

I was surprised when I got the book at how truly small it was. I had originally bought this book thinking I would be able to identify spiders with it. This book is not meant to be a field guide to identification, but rather introduce information about anatomy and characteristics of spiders along with common spiders all over the world and their relatives. I've learned a lot from this awesome tiny book.

This was one of the first books I bought with my own money when I was a kid. I have since bought an updated version since most of the pages have come unglued in the old one (from use, not poor quality). Typical golden book illustrations, not photographs. Easy enough for a kid to use but filled with enough spider species for any adult to use. I have only found one or two spiders in my life that were not in this book.

Last week I woke up when a spider bit me on my forehead. It was a shallow, burning pain rather like someone had injected a weak solution of hydrochloric acid under my skin. About a third of my forehead was flushed red when I first looked in a mirror, but the redness subsided within a few hours, leaving a dime-sized lump that is still visible a week later.I used "Spiders and Their Kin" to tentatively identify the mangled remains of the spider as a small Brown Recluse (`Loxosceles reclusa'). Just in case I needed to go see my doctor, I put the spider into a baggie and froze it. Luckily, my forehead didn't dissolve---according to the Levis, "In severe cases...the wound grows deeper and does not heal for several months."At any rate, "Spiders and Their Kin" is a handy book to have around. I bought a copy for my sister when she found what she thought was a Black Widow in her garage, and I also got a copy for myself in order to identify the gigantic black and yellow spider that was hanging head-down in my Japanese Spiraea (it was---or maybe I should say, she was a Black and Yellow Argiope (`A. aurantia').When I first bought this book, just looking at the cover made me itch. However, it is filled with fascinating little tidbits about Arachnids and their kin. I used to think that Hairy Mygalomorphs were the ugliest spiders on Earth (most especially the ones with ten inch leg spans), but now my vote goes to the Pirate Spiders (`Mimetidae'). Luckily, they are small spiders (4 - 6 mm), so you would have to use a magnifying glass to get the full impact of one of these hairy little dudes.It is really rather impolite of me to make fun of `Mimetidae,' since they help beautify my backyard by eating other spiders. According to the authors:"Pirate Spiders invade webs of other spiders. The slow-moving Pirate Spider bites the web owner, which is quickly paralyzed and sucked dry through the legs, one after another."Sounds like someone dining on crab legs.The only fault I can find with "Spiders and Their Kin" is that it doesn't go into enough detail on the individual species and subspecies of Arachnids. And that's not a fair criticism to make, since Golden Nature Guides are meant to be used for quick identification, not detailed research.Now, I've got to work up my courage, venture outside, and try to identify that big brown spider that has built her web from the house electrical line down to the clematis beside the porch door. Her abdomen is wider than it is long, she has striped legs, and she only comes out after dark...By the way, "Spiders and their Kin" has a useful chapter on `Collecting Spiders.' If you're an arachnophobe like I am, learning more about these critters might be the quickest way to cure yourself.

This book has excellent pictures for identification, however it mainly uses scientific names. There is also limited information about the spider or types of spiders that are pictured. I use this book for identification by the pictures and another book (National Audubon Society's field guide to insects and spiders) to learn more specifics about the spiders attitue and lifesyle. These two books compliment each other perfectly. There are also pictures of spider relatives and insects commonly thought of as spiders, such as whipscorpions, ticks, and arthropods. This book is excellent for a reference!

One day I was walking down the hallways of the elementary school where I work; I saw out of the corner of my eye, something moving rapidly across the floor. The creature looked like it came out of a Star Trek movie. It was straw colored; had long tall legs; and two long feelers that I learned from this book are called: "pedipalps." The pedipalps reached out in front of this creature like they wanted to pull something into its enormous jaws.I caught the creature, put it in to a bottle, and sat the bottle by my side. I scanned through the pages of "Spiders and Their Kin" and there it was. The creature turned from a Star Trek monster to a windscorpion: E. pallipes, to be exact. This relative of the spiders, I found out, is a voracious eater of insects and such. I figured if it would eat up the insects in my garden I'd let it go--and that's what I did. I gave this book a four-star rating, instead of a five star rating, for one reason and one reason only. Last November, my wife was bitten by a hobo spider. The spider was carrying a virus that gave my wife a disease called encephalitis. She almost died from the bite, but she didn't, and now she's nearly recovered fully. I bought the book, "Spiders and Their Kin", hoping to find out more about the hobo spider (Tegenaria agrestis) but all I found were its cousins the "European House Spiders." It would be nice if Golden Guide books would include the hobo spider in future printings of "Spiders and Their Kin." After all, the hobo spider is here to stay.

What this little guide to spiders lacks in detail it makes up for in ease of use. For any amateur arachnologist or just someone who wants to know what kind of spider (or other 8-legged critter) is crawling up their wall, this is an indispensable helper. The color illustrations are accurate, the information provided is adequate even for classroom use, and the number of different arachnids included is quite comprehensive for a book of its size.