Deadly Kingdom: The Book of Dangerous Animals

I bought this book on vacation. I've always thought of it as a vacation book, I have a hard time imagining myself buying it any other time. But in that tiny independent bookstore in Des Moines with my dad, on one of the last days of our vacation, it seemed perfect.

Not on vacation, I almost gave up on this book a few times for being too lightweight. It relies heavily on anecdotes and is clearly meant to be entertaining rather than scholarly, and I resisted for a while before I finally gave in.

Now my chief complaint is that I can't recall enough of the anecdotes. This book is full of the kind of stories you'll be looking for opportunities to interject into conversation. Farmers kicked to death by ostriches. How many servicemen were eaten show more by sharks in WWII. Why hyenas are no laughing matter. Grim conversational gems, to be sure, but fascinating.

As the book progresses, you can tell that Grice's true love are the "gross" animals. Starting somewhere around the snakes, but seriously ramping up when you get into scorpions and spiders, you can almost hear Grice rubbing his hands with glee just behind you. Meanwhile, as he's describing enormous absesses and losses of limb, I'm all but screaming at the book, "But how much time between when they were bitten and when they sought medical help?"

Rigorous, Grice's approach is not. But his love of the subject shows, and that will float you quite a while. Know anyone who thinks humans are precious snowflakes exempt from the food chain? Buy them this book! show less

Writing is a bit sensationalist at times - no statistics, no citations. Later bits seem to be strung together from random snippets of writing. Lions of Tsavo, check. Jim Corbett, check. Main new info for me was the section on pet and captive chimp attacks.

Deadly creatures from tigers to tapeworms are highlighted in each
chapter but there are some critical flaws. First, the amount of
personal stories stray away from the main topic and start to distract
from the plot. Second, this book would have benefited from a good
editor to helped the overall flow of the narrative. Most chapters were
fragmented with interesting facts about each species that lacked
smooth transition into the next species. There were multiple lists of
mauling for each species that became boring and just filler. The
best-edited chapter focused on insects where it was broken down by
each order with subheading that helped to clarify the information. I
didn’t learn anything new from this book and found it a bit
repetitive.

some reviewers said he only dealt with creatures the average person would be familiar with. I don't think this is true, as it is a very broad book. If you already know everything you ever wanted to know about poison sponges, then give it a pass. That said, it is not scientific. If you want a quick surevy if the various ways man can come to sorrow at the paws, funs, teeth, spines of his fellow creatures, this is the book for you

Almost purely anecdotal and scientifically iffy, this is good enough read with the caveat that there's no reason to believe what you're reading is true.

About: Grice writes about all sorts of animals and their attacks on humans.

Pros: Tons of animals covered, from sharks and lions to mice and rabbits.

Cons: No citations or references and in a book with lots of facts and reports from news stories, this is quite a shame.

Grade: B-