Southern African LBJs made simple is an important new guide to the cryptic little birds that are universally known as ‘little brown jobs’. Using colour coding and careful design, the reader is systematically guided through the initial sorting stages: from family group, to ‘visual group’ within the family, and finally to the species. Illustrations with pointers show characteristic features of each species, summarised in an ‘At a glance’ box. Concise text describes visual clues as well as other key ID criteria, such as size, habitat, habits, call and similar-looking and -sounding birds. A distribution map shows range, and each species is linked by track number to its call on the accompanying CD. Identification depends on successfully matching a given number of the bird’s features – in some cases, just a single convincing diagnostic trait.