The Book of Frogs: A Life-Size Guide to Six Hundred Species from around the World, Second Edition

by Mark O'Shea, Tim Halliday

Overview

An up-to-date, beautifully illustrated, and beloved guide to six hundred of the world’s most fascinating frogs.
 
With almost nine thousand known species, frogs display a stunning array of forms and behaviors. A single gram of the toxin produced by the skin of the Golden Poison Frog can kill one hundred thousand people. Male Darwin’s Frogs carry their tadpoles in their vocal sacs for sixty days before coughing them out into the world. And the Wood Frogs of North America freeze every winter, reanimating in the spring.

The Book of Frogs documents the diversity and magnificence of all these anurans and many more. Readers meet six hundred of nature’s most fascinating frogs, with each entry including a distribution map, illustrations, species identification, natural history, and conservation status. Color photos show the frogs at their actual size—from Papua New Guinea’s diminutive Paedophryne amauensis, smaller than a coin, to Cameroon’s colossal Goliath Frog, heavier than some dogs. Written by experts Mark O’Shea and Tim Halliday and containing updated information on one hundred species and nearly twenty new entries, this revised edition will enthrall both veteran researchers and amateur herpetologists.

As frogs increasingly make headlines for their troubling worldwide decline, The Book of Frogs brings readers face to face with six hundred astonishingly unique and irreplaceable species that display a diverse array of adaptations to habitats that are ever changing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226844268
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	11/10/2025
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	656
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Mark O’Shea MBE is a herpetologist, zoologist, author, lecturer, and television presenter. He is professor of herpetology at the University of Wolverhampton and he previously spent thirty-three years as curator of reptiles at West Midland Safari Park. He has made ten expeditions to Papua New Guinea since 1986 and between 2009 and 2014 was coleader of a team based out of Victor Valley College, California, conducting the first herpetofaunal survey of Timor-Leste. O’Shea has hosted television documentaries focused on reptiles for the Discovery Channel, the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4, including four seasons as host of the Animal Planet/Discovery Channel show O’Shea’s Big Adventure. He has participated as herpetologist on numerous tropical expeditions for the Royal Geographical Society, Oxford University, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, University of Melbourne, University of Adelaide, Operation Raleigh, Raleigh Executive, and Discovery Expeditions. He is a fellow of the Explorers’ Club of New York, Royal Geographical Society, Linnean Society of London, and Royal Society of Biology. O’Shea is the author of ten books, including A Guide to the Snakes of Papua New Guinea, which he is currently completely revising. In 2018 he was honored when an Asian pipesnake was named Cylindrophis osheai. He has coauthored twelve new snake species descriptions, two of which are included in the second edition of The Book of Snakes. In 2020 he was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours “for services to higher education, zoology, reptile conservation and snakebite research”. He lives in Shropshire, England, twenty miles from the birthplace of Charles Darwin.


Tim Halliday (1945-2019) was one of the world’s foremost authorities on amphibians. He was formerly professor of biology at the Open University and was International Director of the IUCN Declining Amphibian Populations Task Force for thirteen years.

Table of Contents

Introduction

What is a frog?
Complex life cycle
An acoustic world
Frogs, toads & people
Population declines
Amphibian diseases
Distribution & classification
Why the number of frog species is increasing

The frogs

Appendices
Glossary
Resources
A note on nomenclature
Index of common names
Index of scientific names
Index of family names
Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

If you are a serious (and I mean serious) fan of the frog, you are in for a real treat. From poisonous frogs to tiny toenail-sized frogs, whistlers, ‘explosive breeders,’ endangered frogs, and recently discovered frogs, [this book] covers an exhaustive gamut of frog species from around the planet. A wonderful source for anyone trying to decipher and learn about frogs they find in nature.

on first edition Boing Boing

A huge, beautiful compendium of six hundred frogs from around the world, from the famed poison-arrow variety on up to the intriguingly named plaintive rain frog. The book is a looker.

on first edition WIRED

An extensive compendium of frogs . . . [with] a wide array of fascinating facts in rich prose. . . . The real selling point is the full-color photos, showing the actual size of each frog. The Book of Frogs is the perfect coffee table book for anyone with a passing interest in Anura.

on first edition Conservation Biology

This book will be a wonderful source of basic information for any young person who has become fascinated with frogs, or anyone unfamiliar with frogs who has a desire to learn more about their diversity and biology.

on first edition Quarterly Review of Biology

A rich compendium of six hundred frog species, including many that are critically endangered. This taxonomy provides complete distribution, natural history, and conservation status information, as well as life-size photographs for each species, and is laden with fascinating facts that emphasize the diversity of frogs and the many risks to their persistence worldwide.

on first edition Ecology

Captures both the extraordinary and ordinary of frogs in the same breathless prose that you wrote in love notes to your eighth-grade crush. Couple that with six hundred beautifully composed pictures of sometimes beautiful animals, and you’ve got yourself one hell of a novelty book. In its several months as the centerpiece of my coffee table, The Book of Frogs has generated more conversation than any other item in my apartment. It’s an aesthetic pleasure as an art object, informative as a reference guide.

on first edition Spectrum Culture

Scientific knowledge about frogs has been increasing rapidly. For example, the number of described species has jumped from 5,000 to more than 7,000 in the last fifteen years. At the same time, frogs are a focus of great concern due to severe population declines and extinctions worldwide. This large book . . . is a photographically rich introduction to the global diversity of frogs.

on first edition Choice

An in-depth ecology not of all the world’s frogs and toads, but of a representative fascinating ten percent—what a superb six hundred it is! . . . The Book of Frogs does a splendid job of showing the diversity of frogs and toads.

on first edition Times Literary Supplement

[A] Glorious, magnificent new behemoth of a book. . . . A big, beautiful hardcover filled with color photos. . . . In the book’s mesmerizing master stroke, there’s also a life-sized photo of each frog, from the ones as small as your fingernail to the ones as big as a fat Guinea Pig. It’s a stunning cavalcade, ranging from dull and knobby toads to tree frogs of almost translucent beauty. . . . It’s a joyous experience to savor the unbridled strangeness, the bursting profusion in The Book of Frogs.

on first edition Open Letters Monthly