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Contributions to the History of Herpetology. Volume 1 (revised and expanded). Kraig Adler. 2014. Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles. ISBN 9780916984892. 268p. $40.00 (hardcover).-In 1989, to commemorate the First World Congress in Herpetology, the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles (SSAR) published a volume titled Contributions to the History of Herpetology. This work combined three independent contributions. The first and largest component, Herpetologists of the Past by Kraig Adler, was a series of illustrated biographies of a number of early herpetologists (1516-1987), which had its genesis in an earlier SSAR audiovisual presentation produced by Adler and David Dennis. The other two contributions in the volume were an Index of Authors in Taxonomic Herpetology, compiled by John Applegarth, and Academic Lineages of Doctoral Degrees in Herpetology, by Ronald Altig. To celebrate the SSAR's 50th Anniversary in 2007, a second volume in the series appeared, and in 2012, in conjunction with the 7th World Congress in Herpetology (the first to be held in North America) a third and final volume was published. These later two volumes included updates of the earlier work by Applegarth and Altig, but Adler's section, Herpetologists of the Past, was in each case independent of the previous volumes, with fresh biographies of a new series of herpetologists. Volume 1 covered 152 biographies; an additional 285 were included in Volume 2, and by Volume 3, with its 348 biographies and a number of mini-biographies included in the notes for the main accounts, information on a cumulative total of 991 people of herpetological interest had been presented. This increase, together with the growth of information compiled by Applegarth and Altig, resulted in substantial growth of the volumes. Volume 1, with 202 pages, grew to 389 pages in Volume 2, and to a massive 564 pages for Volume 3, to which Adler's biographical section contributed 141, 273, and 469 pages, respectively.
With the concurrent growth of attendees at the...