Lizard

(Paperback)

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Description

Filled with beguiling images,Lizardis a unique and sometimes surprising introduction to this popular but little-understood reptile.

Boria Sax describes the diversity of lizard species and traces the representation of this reptile in cultures worldwide.Lizards stimulate the human imagination, despite generally being small, soundless, and hidden from sight in burrows, treetops, or crevices. They can blend into a vast range of environments, from rocky coasts to deserts and rainforests. Their fluid motion can make us think of water, while their curvilinear forms suggest vegetation. Their stillness appears deathlike, while their sudden arousal is like resurrection. Lizards are at once overhyped and underappreciated. Our storybooks are full of lizards, but we usually call them something else dragons, serpents, or monsters. Our tales vastly increase their size, bestow wings upon them, make them exhale flame and endow them with magical powers.

This illuminating book demonstrates how the story of lizards is interwoven with the history of the human imagination. Sax describes the diversity of lizards and traces their representation in many cultures, including those of pre-conquest Australia, the Quiche Maya, Mughal India, China, Central Africa, Europe, and America. Lizard is essential reading for natural history enthusiasts, students of animal studies, and the many thousands of people who keep lizards as pets.

Reviews

"Lizard and Dinomania present author/researcher Sax at his multidisciplinary best: mixing and relating biology, botany, paleontology, anthropology, biography, history, mythology, art history, popular culture, and more, into coherent wholes. The skillful way he interweaves these various themes reminds this reviewer of the pictures and models of DNA strands as the complexity of the finished product emerges. . . . Sax and Reaktion Books receive extremely high marks for the quality of these books: not only good binding, but exemplary reproduction of illustrations in both black and white and color. An editorial choice was made to place illustrations throughout--rather than in special sections--something for which all readers should be grateful."-- "Independent Scholar"
"Sax's actual lizards are as wondrous as their dragon and dinosaur relatives. In this sweeping natural/unnatural history, Sax presents lizards in their multiple biological and imaginary forms, from prehistory to the current sixth great extinction. With its wide-ranging research, engaging style, and eclectic illustrations, Lizard is Sax's compelling extension of his award-winning studies of living animals and our folkloric and mythic creations."--Joseph Nigg, author of The Book of Fabulous Beasts: A Treasury of Writings from Ancient Times to the Present
"Though called toads or frogs, the Texas state reptiles are really lizards. But as Sax notes in Lizard, the term is a catchall, not a useful taxonomic category. Conceptually, lizards include not just various four-legged reptiles, but also crocodiles and tuataras, salamanders and armadillos, dragons and dinosaurs."--TIm Morris "lection"

Author Bio

Boria Sax teaches at Mercy College, New York, as well as at Sing Sing and Taconic prisons. He has published over fifteen books, which have won awards and been translated into many languages, including Crow (Reaktion, 2003) and Imaginary Animals (Reaktion, 2013).