Field Guide

Audubon Birds: A Field Guide to North American Birds Audubon Guides Audubon Guides: $19.99

Artist Dugald Stermer, who died Dec. 2 at age 74, was known for his work on Ramparts magazine and most famously for his update of the Olympic medals for the 1984 Games. But as a onetime member of the Los Angeles Times' Outdoors section, I will always cherish the stunning and detailed color illustrations of animals and flowers that he created starting in 2003 for the section, a former part of the newspaper. Each illustration ran weekly and was accompanied by a field guide entry written by naturalist David Lukas.

Artist Dugald Stermer, who died Dec. 2 at age 74, was known for his work on Ramparts magazine and most famously for his update of the Olympic medals for the 1984 Games. But as a onetime member of the Los Angeles Times' Outdoors section, I will always cherish the stunning and detailed color illustrations of animals and flowers that he created starting in 2003 for the section, a former part of the newspaper. Each illustration ran weekly and was accompanied by a field guide entry written by naturalist David Lukas.

It's all but official: Preppy is back. But can Los Angeles — the laid-back land of mañana and margaritas, ever rise to the level of a prep paradise? It may surprise you, but it already has. You wouldn't know it from the definitive text on the topic. When "The Official Preppy Handbook" was published in 1980, it didn't just give the West Coast the short end of the lacrosse stick, it practically smacked the City of Angels upside the head with the milky white sole of a Sperry Top-Sider.

It's all but official: Preppy is back. But can Los Angeles — the laid-back land of mañana and margaritas, ever rise to the level of a prep paradise? It may surprise you, but it already has. You wouldn't know it from the definitive text on the topic. When "The Official Preppy Handbook" was published in 1980, it didn't just give the West Coast the short end of the lacrosse stick, it practically smacked the City of Angels upside the head with the milky white sole of a Sperry Top-Sider.

Natural History of Vacant Lots by Matthew F. Vessel and Herbert H. Wong (University of California: $22.50; illustrated, 284 pages) While science is usually done in laboratories by professionals with expensive equipment, it is possible for amateurs to do science anywhere. Perhaps not high-energy physics, which requires giant atom smashers and the like, but biology is all around us, and it requires little more than a good eye, a curious disposition and a few jars and notebooks.

Roger Tory Peterson, artist and bird lover, started a "revolution" 60 years ago in the hilly meadows and woods surrounding this small city in upstate New York. A walk in the woods hasn't been the same since. It was here that Peterson found the inspiration for an epic work, "A Field Guide to the Birds," a book that revolutionized nature study. It took ornithology out of the laboratory and made the feathered world in the treetops more accessible to the common man.

Everything has a name, right? But when it comes to describing the average fireworks show, most of us are reduced to an occasional stupefied ooh or aah. Attempts to describe a specific effect usually come out something like this: "That big round blue one with the gold swirly things that made one huge boom and a bunch of little pops." A little education--in the form of our fireworks field guide--can remedy such inarticulateness.

Just the idea of a DVD field guide to 300 North American birds makes me think about throwing my laptop into the daypack next time I go birding. But after spending an evening viewing parts of this three-hour DVD -- both on my computer and on my TV screen -- I realize the concept may need some refinement. The DVD doesn't so much replace a field guide as serve as a worthy companion (though I doubt advanced birders would find much of interest).

OUR FASCINATION with the British is Oedipal. "Murdering the King's English," my New England grandmother used to mutter in the face of bad grammar. (Clearly, it made no impression on me.) In her first book "The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British," Sarah Lyall -- who moved to London in the mid-1990s as a correspondent for the New York Times and married British writer-editor Robert McCrum -- tracks the odd and endearing behaviors that help us measure our own quirks and cultural obsessions.

Audubon Birds: A Field Guide to North American Birds Audubon Guides Audubon Guides: $19.99

"James and the Giant Peach" Roald Dahl For many years, James lived with his evil aunts, Spiker and Sponge. James tried to avoid the aunts, but they always got him. He then takes a wild journey on a giant peach. Inside the peach he is befriended by large insects: the grasshopper, ladybug, centipede, earthworm, spider and glow worm. These creatures hate Sponge and Spiker just as much as James does. Anybody who likes adventurous stories will like this book.

OUR FASCINATION with the British is Oedipal. "Murdering the King's English," my New England grandmother used to mutter in the face of bad grammar. (Clearly, it made no impression on me.) In her first book "The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British," Sarah Lyall -- who moved to London in the mid-1990s as a correspondent for the New York Times and married British writer-editor Robert McCrum -- tracks the odd and endearing behaviors that help us measure our own quirks and cultural obsessions.

Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America Roger Peterson Houghton Mifflin: 532 pp., $26 -- Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America Ted Floyd Collins: 512 pp., $24.95 Picking a birding field guide is a little like picking a spouse. You have to find it attractive, of course, but that's just not enough for the long haul. You need something smart, reliable. Something that won't fail you when you need it most. Something compact enough to carry on a long hike but comprehensive enough to help you identify an unfamiliar bird when you're 10 miles out on a trail with nobody to ask for help.

This paperback guide may be titillating for trivia and history hounds, whether they're fans of Wright, or even of architecture in general. Styled like an old-fashioned travel Baedeker, it's a compilation of every residential, commercial or civic structure designed by the inimitable architect (about 500 of them), including those that never were built, and those designed for Iraq, India and Japan.

Toward the end of her latest book, an intriguing amalgam of personal memoir, philosophical speculation, natural lore, cultural history and art criticism, San Francisco-based writer Rebecca Solnit remarks: "A man once told me that much of my writing was about loss ... and I thought about that comment for a long time." As a historian, Solnit reflects, she feels strongly committed to retrieving lost material from the past, to prevent it from slipping away.

Re the Field Guide (Dec. 23) on the banana slug: You forgot to mention that it is the mascot for UC Santa Cruz. That's one mascot the Indians haven't taken a shot at. Leslie C. Brand Pasadena

How do you translate the barred owl's call -- Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you? -- into Spanish? Translating bird "voices" was one of the trickiest parts of producing "Guia de campo Kaufman a las aves de Norteamerica," the first Spanish-language field guide to North American birds. "There have been field guides to Mexico in Spanish, but never one for North America," says Taryn Roeder of Houghton Mifflin, publisher of the guide.

How do you translate the barred owl's call -- Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you? -- into Spanish? Translating bird "voices" was one of the trickiest parts of producing "Guia de campo Kaufman a las aves de Norteamerica," the first Spanish-language field guide to North American birds. "There have been field guides to Mexico in Spanish, but never one for North America," says Taryn Roeder of Houghton Mifflin, publisher of the guide.

Just the idea of a DVD field guide to 300 North American birds makes me think about throwing my laptop into the daypack next time I go birding. But after spending an evening viewing parts of this three-hour DVD -- both on my computer and on my TV screen -- I realize the concept may need some refinement. The DVD doesn't so much replace a field guide as serve as a worthy companion (though I doubt advanced birders would find much of interest).