EVERGLADES <i> by Connie Toops </i> : THE SKY ISLANDS OF SOUTHEAST ARIZONA <i> by Kate Crowley & Mike Link (Voyageur: $14.95 each, illustrated) </i>

Two new installments in Voyageur’s “Wilderness” series devoted to America’s indigenous flora and fauna. Mike Link’s descriptions of the animals and people who inhabit the Arizona deserts and riparian environments have a crisp clarity lacking in the other writers’ work. Connie Toops’ personal accounts of trekking through the forests and swamps of the Everglades really don’t tell the reader much about that fragile, threatened environment. But most people will buy these large-format books for the gorgeous color photographs of egrets, cacti, sunsets, etc. that make both volumes resemble outsize Sierra Club calendars.