Spiders and Their Kin (A Golden Guide from St. Martin's Press)

Unfortunately time does not stand still and the reprinted version of this book is somewhat behind in its treatment of spider families. There has been some attempt by St. Martin's Press to revise the classification (the sac spiders are shown to belong to several families), but some of the other families have also undergone major changes (e.g. "Ctenizidae" is now at least three families) and "brown spiders" (a name I really do not like- I prefer "violin spiders" as more descriptive) are now members of the Sicariidae. Neither of the last two changes made it into the revised book, either because they occurred after the corrected copy was submitted or because they were overlooked. The current revision does include the statement that urocteids and oecobiids have been united under the Oecobiidae - as it turns out, having a cribellum is a primitive trait and does not indicate relationships very well- but mistakenly indicates that the "oecobiids" are larger than "urocteids". It also still has the two "families" on different pages, so the revision did not include a rearrangement of the figures. In the scorpions there have been major taxonomic changes as well, but most of these were not noted (again several are probably just too recent to have been included). However, Hadrurus is correctly placed in the Iuridae, instead of the Vaejovidae.

Because of these major developments I cannot recommend this book as an up to date guide to currently recognized spider families, but it still is a good starting place for those (especially young people) who would like to know more about arachnids, millipedes, centipedes, and land crustaceans. Fortunately many, if not most, of the families (e. g. Theraphosidae, Oonopidae, Salticidae, Linyphiidae, Selenopidae, Theridiidae, Araneidae, Tetragnathidae, Lycosidae) are still valid as described in the original edition of the book.


A good little field guide   February 26, 2004
 5 out of 5 found this review helpful

Upon first reading, it is unfortunate that "Spiders and Their Kin" shows but a select few species from among the Arachnid pantheon, but it has been a great read and a great reference over the ten-plus years since I first purchased an earlier edition.

Used as a sole reference, the book is lacking in many crucial details, but there are more specialized books available to those who find that the information within these pages is less than desired.

True, it will not go in-depth with regard to each individual species, and may not show one in particular, but it's a handier starting point for arachnid identification than its larger brethren and, that, I think, is the purpose for which it is intended to be used.

The bottom line: if you know little to nothing about arachnids at this time, or you just need a field guide to get you started on making identifications, go ahead and buy Levi's little gem. If you feel like you need to learn all that can be learned about an individual species of spider or need more specialized/more advanced field guides, then this is probably not the book for you.


Good Starter book   September 8, 2003
 6 out of 7 found this review helpful

I think this is a good starter book for identfying spiders that are more common. There are a couple of pages on webs that I found interesting. In the front it gives a great visual on how the Arthropod group is broken out and how different spider types break out within that - all helps when trying to do the id. There are so many different amazing spiders - this can only scrath the surface but is a really good place to start. I just like taking pictures and having a general idea of what I'm looking at so for me it works...I will be checking out other books too though like "How to Know Spiders" if there is one in that "How to Know" series.