 Great Field Guide
Excellent guide to the butterflies of the Eastern US. The guide goes over photography, butterfly habits, and collecting/raising butterflies. The drawings allow for easy identification of butterflies by displaying distinctive differences. I find the drawings to work much better than photographs taken in the wild. There is more information that can be added to book (larvae, pupae etc.) but given its size, it would be near impossible.
Eastern butterflies of the USA
I have the 1960's edition of this book also. One thing that makes the Peterson Field Guide Series books so terrific is that they are updated every few years. Several "new to the USA species" have shown up in the past 40 years. Most have migrated here from Mexico.
All of the Peterson Field Guide books are beautifuly done. The color photos and drawings are wonderful, as well as the maps. I would also recommend that you buy the Guide to the Western species.
Excellent Resource for Butterfly watchers!
Easy to use, with beautiful color pictures of real butterflies. Small enough to take with you butterfly watching.
 Excellent for the student
Unlike some other reviewers I have always liked the Peterson guides best and this is no exception. The emphasis of the book is not simply on sight identification (which can be difficult at best) but also on a rounded education about the world of butterflies.
The first several chapters cover butterfly habitat, life history, behavior and other things helpful for the collector or student. The main chapters are divided by common names with each sub-heading giving both common and scientific names. The butterflies are described according to range, size, and habitat, and there is typically some discussion of the insects' identifying peculiarities.
This isn't the best guide for someone wanting to identity bugs in their garden - other guides have much better and many more photos - but for the general student this is the best.
 Not quite what I expected
While the author doubtless put a lot of work into this work I did not feel it came up to the standards of other Peterson handbooks. Perhaps it was the wrong book for what I wanted but I would have liked to see more on the larval and pupal forms of the butterflies than there was. Also I felt the organization of the book was a bit confusing and hard to use.
Richard Sallee
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