Book review - 𝘍𝘳𝘰𝘨𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥: 𝘈 𝘎𝘶𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘍𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘺

Book cover, from here.

Due to real-life obligations I've had little time to dedicate to this blog, but I aim to do better, and given how much I enjoyed writing my previous book review, I thought I'd do another quick review of another nice book I've had the pleasure of reading, this being Frogs of the World: A Guide to Every Family by Mark O'Shea and Simon Maddock.

This book is not a technical manual as I would have personally preferred, though, in retrospective, we absolutely do need good quality, general-reader-friendly publications like this for more groups of animals.

It nevertheless serves as a great introduction to the anurans and their various families: as other commentators have pointed out (Clark 2024; Allain 2025) including all anuran species would have been a tremendous endeavour beyond the scope of this work. Still, all recognised families are featured, thus serving more as a manual to anuran diversity as a whole, rather than a field guide.

The book is also complete with details on geographic distribution, feeding and reproductive strategies, lists of genera, and threat status, making for a great quick reference on all these topics, and also features an introduction covering taxonomy and evolutionary history, anatomy, physiology and reproduction, among others.

A sample page from the book, note the gorgeous photographs and the very useful geographic, ecological and taxonomical quick data. From here.

The photographs are excellent and a pleasure to look at, and, being it a 2024 publication, the taxonomy is largely up-to-date, though some ambiguities remain. The groups are divided into "Archaeobatrachia," "Mesobatrachia," and Neobatrachia: while this chapter structure makes sense from an organisational point of view, I would have preferred a mention of the fact that the first two groups are currently considered paraphyletic, as also shown by the tree at the beginning of the book (which, likely due to a graphic error, shows the Myobatrachoidea-Hyloidea clade as "floating", unconnected to the rest of the tree).

The taxonomical organisation followed in the book: operatively useful, but perhaps technically questionable. From here.

As another example, the extinct devil frog or devil toad (Beelzebufo ampinga) is treated as part of the Ceratophryidae family (or at least a close relative), yet this classification has been challenged by various phylogenetic analyses.

Some commentators (specifically Allain 2025) have also stated that the title of the book may be "slightly misleading as it does include toads too", but I disagree with this criticism, and the authors cleverly address the ambiguity from the very beginning of the book: the name "toad" has been applied to various groups of anurans (particularly, but not exclusively, members of Bufonidae), and are thus not clearly separable from frogs, so the term "frog" may be applied to all members of Anura, whether they're commonly referred to as "toads" or not.

In any case, I recommend it to anyone wishing to explore the wonderful world of anurans, or to those who are already familiar with them but want a concise overview for quick consultation.

You can buy the book here from the publisher and here from Amazon.

My personal copy in its natural environment, with other books in need of a review.

References

• Allain, Steven J. R. (2025). "Book Review: Frogs of the World: A guide to every family". The Herpetological Bulletin (171). doi:10.33256/hb171.4647.
• Clark, H.O., Jr. (2024). Review of "Frogs of the World: A Guide to Every Family" by Mark O'Shea and Simon Maddock. Sonoran Herpetologist 37(2):104-105.