Russian butterflies: two book or not to book? :-)

[Chichvarkhin, Anton]

Zdravko - Indeed, your consideration about what we can expect from the
books by Tuzov and Gorbunov are 100% correct. But...:

1. It is not so correct speaking that Gorbunov's book had been written by
the only person. In 1995, P.Gorbunov published a trial version in
Russian (Korshunov, Gorbunov. 1995. The Butterflies of Asian Part of
Russia. Ural University Press, Ekaterinburg). This book induced rather
controversial opinions and Gorbunov received a couple of comments,
arguments and suggestions of numerous amateur and professional
entomologists. After the analysis of these comments, he produced the
book issued in 2001. Also, this book was initially planned as rather
cheap, then those who advised for the corrections did not wish to
share the authorship and copyright ;).

2. This book is the only key that may be used for Russian butterfly
identification, while it is still not clear for me what is the purpose
of Tuzov's book rather than big, expensive, and full-color brief
encyclopedia. Since you like to identify the butterflies you must
use Gorbunov's book, while if you need an expensive monument on your
book shelf you need Tuzov's one. I do not like to say that Tuzov's
team are bad experts because I know that they're excellent, but I
guess that they did not agree about the basic idea of the book. I
looked through Tuzov's book for many times and never desired to buy
and use it. :(

3. There is one indeed bad point in Gorbunov's book: there are
many merely linguistic mistakes. But it does not distort the essence
of this book. It is more a disadvantage of Linguistic Editor of this
book then the author's.

_______________________________

Eugeny - Indeed, Pensoft sales the Gorbunov's book at $55. Also, Erich
Bauer sales it at DM120. This is too low price for this book because of...
strange politics of the publisher, who sold to the dealers this book
at too low price. Now, Gorbunov together with me is trying to sell a part
of stock by ourselves to stabilize post-publication  financial crisis
and to get some funds (frankly speaking, we do not believe that we may
get it) required to implement our joint project on butterfly studies,
and detailed book on Far-Eastern butterfly fauna preparation. Hence,
since December we agree to sell the book at $50 including surface
delivery, $65 including airmail, $90 including express mail.

-- 
Best regards,
 Anton                          mailto: anton_ch at rambler.ru



 
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