Jerome Clark

This is not so much an encyclopedia of cryptids (the mysterious and charismatic creatures which may or may not exist) as an encyclopedia of the art and community of cryptozoology itself. Oh, there are plenty of entries on cryptids, and they are fairly good (if not as in-depth as one might hope) but there are just as many entries for cryptozoologists, organizations, terminology, and recently-discovered animals that were never cryptids. So a good encyclopedia if you're interested in cryptozoology as a culture, but not so much if it's just the interesting creatures themselves that you want to know about - I wouldn't recommend this to someone with a casual interest, and someone with a more-than-casual interest probably has better sources for the cryptid entries.… (more)