Alaska Trees and Shrubs: A Field Guide to the Woody Plants of Alaska Paperback – 6 January 2020

This book lifts the title of a work that has been around since the '70s by Viereck and Little. The author states that that book was the basis for his, and that it needed updating. But he somehow missed that the Viereck book was updated in a new edition in 2007 and is widely available. The author seems to acknowledge the similarities in a nod to the authors as their bios are given. The similarities in organization, etc., of the two books is unfortunate. Just like in the Viereck book, the author includes a full vegetation map of Alaska, but the text of said map is so small I could barely read it with magnifying glass...(the Viereck book has a nice fold out map).The primary differences between this and the 2007 Veireck book include:-This book includes color images with the species, which is nice especially if you rely on images for ID…..However, no image is attributed to any photographer(s) even though the author notes most were taken from public domain flicker, etc. One should always, always, attribute photos!-This book has a few added species over the earlier book, but mostly obscure or introduced species.-This book has weak range maps.-I didn’t closely examine the key or any updated taxonomy. Taxonomy changes all the time so is no longer a relevant concern anyway imo.The problem with the range maps is the author used herbarium specimen maps (dots on map), rather than a proper "range" map showing the actual range of a plant. With black and white spruce, for example, the dots suggest the trees hardly occur in the center of the state, which is their primary range (the most common trees in AK). So these range maps provide some sense of the range, but are also misleading at times. The maps also have dots of different colors and no explanation is given as to what the colors mean. For range maps, the Viereck booth far exceeds this one.If this were the only field guide available to Alaska trees and shrubs it'd get a better review. But that it borrows so heavily from an earlier work with only modest improvements and some weaknesses, makes it so-so in comparison. As with all field guides, the more you have the more you learn as various authors include different information. However, if you were to have only one guide to woody plants for your AK travels, I'd go with the Veirek book (unless photos on page are important to you). This book is a great second reference.