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Butterfly People: An American Encounter with the Beauty of the World
With 32 pages of full-color inserts and black-and-white illustrations throughout.
From one of our most highly regarded historians, here is an original and engrossing chronicle of nineteenth-century America’s infatuation with butterflies, and the story of the naturalists who unveiled the mysteries of their existence.
A product of William Leach’s lifelong love of butterflies, this engaging and elegantly illustrated history shows how Americans from all walks of life passionately pursued butterflies, and how through their discoveries and observations they transformed the character of natural history. Leach focuses on the correspondence and scientific writings of half a dozen pioneering lepidopterists who traveled across the country and throughout the world, collecting and studying unknown and exotic species. In a book as full of life as the subjects themselves and foregrounding a collecting culture now on the brink of vanishing, Leach reveals how the beauty of butterflies led Americans into a deeper understanding of the natural world. He shows, too, that the country’s enthusiasm for butterflies occurred at the very moment that another form of beauty—the technological and industrial objects being displayed at world’s fairs and commercial shows—was emerging, and that Americans’ attraction to this new beauty would eventually, and at great cost, take precedence over nature in general and butterflies in particular.
From one of our most highly regarded historians, here is an original and engrossing chronicle of nineteenth-century America’s infatuation with butterflies, and the story of the naturalists who unveiled the mysteries of their existence.
A product of William Leach’s lifelong love of butterflies, this engaging and elegantly illustrated history shows how Americans from all walks of life passionately pursued butterflies, and how through their discoveries and observations they transformed the character of natural history. Leach focuses on the correspondence and scientific writings of half a dozen pioneering lepidopterists who traveled across the country and throughout the world, collecting and studying unknown and exotic species. In a book as full of life as the subjects themselves and foregrounding a collecting culture now on the brink of vanishing, Leach reveals how the beauty of butterflies led Americans into a deeper understanding of the natural world. He shows, too, that the country’s enthusiasm for butterflies occurred at the very moment that another form of beauty—the technological and industrial objects being displayed at world’s fairs and commercial shows—was emerging, and that Americans’ attraction to this new beauty would eventually, and at great cost, take precedence over nature in general and butterflies in particular.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2012
About the author
William R. Leach
8 books2 followersWilliam R. Leach is a professor of history at Columbia University. His books include Butterfly People, Country of Exiles: The Destruction of Place in American Life, and Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture, which was a National Book Award finalist.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
August 28, 2022
Leach makes an impressive dive into primary sources to draw fascinating portraits of the people who studied butterflies in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. One of the most inspiring aspects of the portrait was the diverse range of their interests, especially the way many of them saw science as compatible with a poetic appreciation of beauty. Bringing in Santayana's philosophy on beauty offered a useful perspective on the tenor of the times.
Another inspiring and eye-opening aspect of the book was the range of people involved. Most of the time got spent on the men who had starring, influential roles, but Leach also gives credit to a wide range of amateur butterfly artists and students. I loved learning about the work of Mary Peart, and the husband and wife teams, Herbert and Daisy Smith and John and Anna Comstock.
Because the book is about collectors it's no surprise that he defends collecting and it is interesting to see that even the collectors had some scruples, but sometimes it was a little much.
Another inspiring and eye-opening aspect of the book was the range of people involved. Most of the time got spent on the men who had starring, influential roles, but Leach also gives credit to a wide range of amateur butterfly artists and students. I loved learning about the work of Mary Peart, and the husband and wife teams, Herbert and Daisy Smith and John and Anna Comstock.
Because the book is about collectors it's no surprise that he defends collecting and it is interesting to see that even the collectors had some scruples, but sometimes it was a little much.
July 2, 2015
Tremendous.
Even as there are parts I wrestle with, or think are wrong or unstated. This is an achievement, a work of history and a meditation upon the state of our world--a world that made certain choices during the historical epoch surveyed here, foreclosing other, perhaps more humane, opportunities. Amazing to get all of that out of a story of a handful of nineteenth-century Americans who loved butterflies. But there it is: part of the achievement.
The story is multi-layered. The first layer is history as recovery and reconstruction. Leach wants to figure out who were the Americans writing about butterflies, collecting them, in the nineteenth century. He wants to rebuild their world, the forces that compelled them, and those that fenced them in. The whys and what-fors of the past. And he does this beautifully, focusing mostly on a handful of people, a couple of Yankees (Edwards and Scudder), a pair of German Romantics (Grote and Strecker), and the Christian capitalist Holland. But from there he builds out, reconstructing their social world and network of relations, stretching backwards in time to Linnaeaus and Buffon and across the Atlantic, particularly to England and Germany (but also Sweden and France) where lived influences and those who would extend the work.
Leach sees collecting as the motivating force of the group, a desire to connect to nature in a very physical, visceral way. (There's a chapter on the emotional response of butterfly collectors to their query.) From this was a desire to know the insects in an intimate way--to understand them as species (which involved debates over Darwinism), to describe them, draw them, and also to understand their life histories, from larva to imago, to understand their ecology, how they lived and how they died (another chapter concerns the butterfly people's investigation of predation and parasitism). This is really good stuff, so much better than Richard Coniff's "The Species Seekers," which mostly treated naturalists as a species of kooks, Leach gets inside the head of these men--they were mostly men--and understands them.
I mostly go along with what he says about the collectors and their desires. Still, I would have liked him to engage more the literature in the history of science on collecting. He notes some, mostly, "Cultures of Natural History," but doesn't do anything with, say, Ann Secord's work on the relations between amateurs and professionals in England, or "science in the pub." (He even discusses the importance of beer meetings, but doesn't make the connection.) For Leach, the defining separation is between hod carriers and master builders--that is to say, the main characters here are master builders, relying on the work of hod carriers to send them butterflies and notes from all around the country. This division works better than the traditional cleavage between amateurs and professionals, since even the master builders in his story are often amateurs--one's a coal mine owner, for example.
These people were tucked into a different world, one dominated by family farms, which helped to increase the number of butterflies and moths, and gave plenty of room for collections. Leach does a good job of breaking the dogma that early entomologists were naught but stamp collectors, and had sophisticated understandings of species. (Working against the baleful but powerful rule of Ernst Mayr on the history of systematics.) I do question some of this, though, and wish he had followed the story out a little farther. In Leach's story, butterfly classification is solid, just not complete. But there were alternative classificatory schemes (the quintenary system, for example), and by the 1920s there was such a confusion about the nature of species that some butterflies were burdened with as many as eight names. I would have liked to know how we got from Leach's butterfly men to that mess--that mess which set the stage for Mayr's own understanding of taxonomy.
Initially, butterfly men were almost only interested in American species alone, with a few exceptions; by the 1880s, though, they had become interested in foreign species, too, and were busy amassing huge collections of butterflies and moths from around the world. Strecker remained the most relentless, amassing the largest, but Holland had the most resources at his disposal, in part because of his connection with Andrew Carnegie, in part because he married well.
And this leads to another layer of the book, which is about the transformation of capitalism in the nineteenth century, from the republican variant before the Cvil War to the increasing dominance of the industrial version. This transformation also transformed nature--those family farms and what Robert Kohler called inner frontiers were increasingly erased, destroying the areas where naturalists could first learn then ply their trade. the transformation could be seen with Edwards' West Virginia cola mine, which was taken over by his son, became absentee owned, and gobbled up the state just as the United States (and European powers) were gobbling up the world in the new imperialism. Butterflies became commodities--especially for the very rich Holland, who had forsaken his family's poor Moravian religion for a Presbyterian gospel of success.
Butterflies are also subsumed by the rise of economic entomology, which replaces natural history as a way of understanding the insect world, especially in America (and a little bit in Germany). Here is another point where I disagree with Leach. There was a transition from natural history entomology to economic entomology, but that transformation was complicated, with lots of countervailing forces. Natural history as a mode of understanding was never completely routed. Indeed, it helped economic entomology, and helped save it from itself. But it is true that for an important cadre of entomologists, their science was only important in so far as it could help people kill troublesome insects, without regard to other kinds. Leach is right that economic entomology did come to compete with--and often defeat--natural history. It's not the whole story, but it is an important part of one, and though this part of the story of too simplified it is important to his these, for it leads to another layer.
This layer is about the changing notions of beauty under the regime of capitalism. early in the story, nature was the source of beauty. (Earlier still,, it was God, working through nature.) By the end, the products of man are the measures of beauty, technology and industrialism. Ironically, although this view of beauty ends up steamrolling the butterfly men, they helped to spread them, too, Edwards with his coal mining; the need for railroads to reach the far flung outposts of empire (where exotic butterflies lived); the use of photography instead of drawings, which distanced the naturalist from the creature. We live in a different age than the 19th century butterfly men, one where beauty has been pushed far from us, even if we are surrounded by beautiful things: or, better put, where a certain kind of beauty is incredibly rare, replaced by the artefactual one we all know.
These are very different kinds of stories, about personalities, about structures, about cultural change, but Leach is very good about balancing them--and, indeed, about never letting the themes overwhelm the story itself, but keeping them in the background. He pays attention to the individual, the idiosyncratic--a lot of the battles between the various butterfly men were based on personal peccadilloes as much as anything else--yet also notes--without calling too much attention to it--where the structural intersects with the individual to help create different kinds of culture: how John Muir, for example, could allow for the killing of butterflies by collectors because of the sense of natural history then still dominant, or how collectors could justify killing the things they loved because a Darwinian nature was even more cruel. Or of how collectors sent to the empire might go for individual reasons, but their lives were structured by imperialism and its creations.
The result is not so much a monograph or even book of history. It's a meditation, an extended and very smart essay, a really brilliant book that sneaks up on you and shows the world to you in a whole new way.
Even as there are parts I wrestle with, or think are wrong or unstated. This is an achievement, a work of history and a meditation upon the state of our world--a world that made certain choices during the historical epoch surveyed here, foreclosing other, perhaps more humane, opportunities. Amazing to get all of that out of a story of a handful of nineteenth-century Americans who loved butterflies. But there it is: part of the achievement.
The story is multi-layered. The first layer is history as recovery and reconstruction. Leach wants to figure out who were the Americans writing about butterflies, collecting them, in the nineteenth century. He wants to rebuild their world, the forces that compelled them, and those that fenced them in. The whys and what-fors of the past. And he does this beautifully, focusing mostly on a handful of people, a couple of Yankees (Edwards and Scudder), a pair of German Romantics (Grote and Strecker), and the Christian capitalist Holland. But from there he builds out, reconstructing their social world and network of relations, stretching backwards in time to Linnaeaus and Buffon and across the Atlantic, particularly to England and Germany (but also Sweden and France) where lived influences and those who would extend the work.
Leach sees collecting as the motivating force of the group, a desire to connect to nature in a very physical, visceral way. (There's a chapter on the emotional response of butterfly collectors to their query.) From this was a desire to know the insects in an intimate way--to understand them as species (which involved debates over Darwinism), to describe them, draw them, and also to understand their life histories, from larva to imago, to understand their ecology, how they lived and how they died (another chapter concerns the butterfly people's investigation of predation and parasitism). This is really good stuff, so much better than Richard Coniff's "The Species Seekers," which mostly treated naturalists as a species of kooks, Leach gets inside the head of these men--they were mostly men--and understands them.
I mostly go along with what he says about the collectors and their desires. Still, I would have liked him to engage more the literature in the history of science on collecting. He notes some, mostly, "Cultures of Natural History," but doesn't do anything with, say, Ann Secord's work on the relations between amateurs and professionals in England, or "science in the pub." (He even discusses the importance of beer meetings, but doesn't make the connection.) For Leach, the defining separation is between hod carriers and master builders--that is to say, the main characters here are master builders, relying on the work of hod carriers to send them butterflies and notes from all around the country. This division works better than the traditional cleavage between amateurs and professionals, since even the master builders in his story are often amateurs--one's a coal mine owner, for example.
These people were tucked into a different world, one dominated by family farms, which helped to increase the number of butterflies and moths, and gave plenty of room for collections. Leach does a good job of breaking the dogma that early entomologists were naught but stamp collectors, and had sophisticated understandings of species. (Working against the baleful but powerful rule of Ernst Mayr on the history of systematics.) I do question some of this, though, and wish he had followed the story out a little farther. In Leach's story, butterfly classification is solid, just not complete. But there were alternative classificatory schemes (the quintenary system, for example), and by the 1920s there was such a confusion about the nature of species that some butterflies were burdened with as many as eight names. I would have liked to know how we got from Leach's butterfly men to that mess--that mess which set the stage for Mayr's own understanding of taxonomy.
Initially, butterfly men were almost only interested in American species alone, with a few exceptions; by the 1880s, though, they had become interested in foreign species, too, and were busy amassing huge collections of butterflies and moths from around the world. Strecker remained the most relentless, amassing the largest, but Holland had the most resources at his disposal, in part because of his connection with Andrew Carnegie, in part because he married well.
And this leads to another layer of the book, which is about the transformation of capitalism in the nineteenth century, from the republican variant before the Cvil War to the increasing dominance of the industrial version. This transformation also transformed nature--those family farms and what Robert Kohler called inner frontiers were increasingly erased, destroying the areas where naturalists could first learn then ply their trade. the transformation could be seen with Edwards' West Virginia cola mine, which was taken over by his son, became absentee owned, and gobbled up the state just as the United States (and European powers) were gobbling up the world in the new imperialism. Butterflies became commodities--especially for the very rich Holland, who had forsaken his family's poor Moravian religion for a Presbyterian gospel of success.
Butterflies are also subsumed by the rise of economic entomology, which replaces natural history as a way of understanding the insect world, especially in America (and a little bit in Germany). Here is another point where I disagree with Leach. There was a transition from natural history entomology to economic entomology, but that transformation was complicated, with lots of countervailing forces. Natural history as a mode of understanding was never completely routed. Indeed, it helped economic entomology, and helped save it from itself. But it is true that for an important cadre of entomologists, their science was only important in so far as it could help people kill troublesome insects, without regard to other kinds. Leach is right that economic entomology did come to compete with--and often defeat--natural history. It's not the whole story, but it is an important part of one, and though this part of the story of too simplified it is important to his these, for it leads to another layer.
This layer is about the changing notions of beauty under the regime of capitalism. early in the story, nature was the source of beauty. (Earlier still,, it was God, working through nature.) By the end, the products of man are the measures of beauty, technology and industrialism. Ironically, although this view of beauty ends up steamrolling the butterfly men, they helped to spread them, too, Edwards with his coal mining; the need for railroads to reach the far flung outposts of empire (where exotic butterflies lived); the use of photography instead of drawings, which distanced the naturalist from the creature. We live in a different age than the 19th century butterfly men, one where beauty has been pushed far from us, even if we are surrounded by beautiful things: or, better put, where a certain kind of beauty is incredibly rare, replaced by the artefactual one we all know.
These are very different kinds of stories, about personalities, about structures, about cultural change, but Leach is very good about balancing them--and, indeed, about never letting the themes overwhelm the story itself, but keeping them in the background. He pays attention to the individual, the idiosyncratic--a lot of the battles between the various butterfly men were based on personal peccadilloes as much as anything else--yet also notes--without calling too much attention to it--where the structural intersects with the individual to help create different kinds of culture: how John Muir, for example, could allow for the killing of butterflies by collectors because of the sense of natural history then still dominant, or how collectors could justify killing the things they loved because a Darwinian nature was even more cruel. Or of how collectors sent to the empire might go for individual reasons, but their lives were structured by imperialism and its creations.
The result is not so much a monograph or even book of history. It's a meditation, an extended and very smart essay, a really brilliant book that sneaks up on you and shows the world to you in a whole new way.
September 26, 2014
This is a lovely volume, very well designed and illustrated, with a winning dustjacket. If one is interested in the strong mid- and late-19th century widespread interest in collecting and describing American butterflies, then this is absorbing. As the title appropriately states, the book is about "Butterfly People" and only incidentally about the butterflies. It is an in-depth study of the people who contributed in major ways and in full depth to the American picture of butterfly diversity, color, locations, and their life and characteristics. On that basis I give the book four stars as a quality product.
This book with its extensive endnotes is promoted as "From one of our most highly regarded historians, here is an original and engrossing chronicle of nineteenth-century America’s infatuation with butterflies, and the story of the naturalists who unveiled the mysteries of their existence."
My interest in butterflies skews to their individual beauty, their individual habitats,their migration, and their stages of life. To this esoteric book by Leach does not capture and hold my interest, for it is a deep historical study - more focused on the people and their actions than it is on the creatures of the butterfly world.
This book with its extensive endnotes is promoted as "From one of our most highly regarded historians, here is an original and engrossing chronicle of nineteenth-century America’s infatuation with butterflies, and the story of the naturalists who unveiled the mysteries of their existence."
My interest in butterflies skews to their individual beauty, their individual habitats,their migration, and their stages of life. To this esoteric book by Leach does not capture and hold my interest, for it is a deep historical study - more focused on the people and their actions than it is on the creatures of the butterfly world.
March 14, 2014
Not quite a 4. This is not a book about butterflies but primarily the 19th Century collectors/naturalists who documented them. They were human; sometimes generous, sometimes petty (or worse), but they collected and wrote about butterflies and moths. Some were artists while others employed artists.
The first part was primarily about William Henry Edwards who wrote a beautiful set of books with exquisite color illustrations by Mary Peart.
Others are brought into the picture and all sides examined. Well documented and some nice reproductions from the books published
The first part was primarily about William Henry Edwards who wrote a beautiful set of books with exquisite color illustrations by Mary Peart.
Others are brought into the picture and all sides examined. Well documented and some nice reproductions from the books published
October 26, 2020
I really enjoyed the introduction to this book, and that made it well worth picking it up, but the individual bios were quite dry.
February 4, 2015
A biographically oriented history of nineteenth century American lepidopterists. The book begins with the early lives of some "Yankees", especially William Henry Edwards and Samuel Scudder; then some German immigrants, especially Herman Strecker and Augustus Grote. More figures appear in the middle of the book, which also gives much more information on their activities and on the science of the native American butterflies and moths. The second half deals with Americans who studied foreign, especially tropical insects, and ends with the deaths of the people discussed and the transformation of American entomology from the study of insects for their own sakes as science and beautiful creatures to the study of how to eradicate them as "pests" with the rise of capitalist monoculture and the decline of family farming.
This book had a lot of information I had no idea of; I hadn't realized for example that entomologists were generally the first naturalists to accept Darwinism and provide evidence for natural selection. The book could have been better organized, and there was more about disputes and private quarrels than I would have preferred, but it was an interesting read.
This book had a lot of information I had no idea of; I hadn't realized for example that entomologists were generally the first naturalists to accept Darwinism and provide evidence for natural selection. The book could have been better organized, and there was more about disputes and private quarrels than I would have preferred, but it was an interesting read.
September 25, 2017
Very, very interesting. So much I didn't know about the early history of lepidoptera. I had NO idea what a scoundrel and vicious capitalist William Holland was. I'm ashamed to own one of his books, even though it's falling apart. Naturally, this made me want to read lots of other books that I didn't even know about.
I remember when I was a child and certain species, Diana Fritillary, Zebra Swallowtail, Regal Moths were rare. I have never seen another Fritillary other than Diana and Great-Spangled. And yet, once there were thousands. This book speaks of the clouds that darkened the sun, much like the Passenger Pigeon. There was another book I read, can't remember what it was, that spoke of the mercury vapour lamps at a gas station in the 1940s attracting so many Citheronia regalis that the pavement was slippery with them. Gone. All but completely gone.
I had a very difficult time with the reality that our world is continually being destroyed by our species. Answer to that problem, anyone. Anyone. Please.
I remember when I was a child and certain species, Diana Fritillary, Zebra Swallowtail, Regal Moths were rare. I have never seen another Fritillary other than Diana and Great-Spangled. And yet, once there were thousands. This book speaks of the clouds that darkened the sun, much like the Passenger Pigeon. There was another book I read, can't remember what it was, that spoke of the mercury vapour lamps at a gas station in the 1940s attracting so many Citheronia regalis that the pavement was slippery with them. Gone. All but completely gone.
I had a very difficult time with the reality that our world is continually being destroyed by our species. Answer to that problem, anyone. Anyone. Please.
February 5, 2014
Not many will disagree that appearance wise, butterflies are amongst the most beautiful creatures on the planet. But unfortunately, what becomes clear in this book is just how ugly we, as a species can be. I was captivated by the cover of this book and read it hoping to gain a further appreciation for butterflies than I already had. And while I did learn some fascinating facts and and gained some interesting new insights about butterflies, for the most part I was disappointed with this book. The book is titled Butterfly People, and thusly and sadly, so much of this book is about the petty infighting, backstabbing, double-crossing, downright malicious, manner in which the leading Lepidopterists of the day treated each other. A book that could have focused on the beauty of butterflies instead turned into treatise on just how ugly homo sapiens can be.
January 16, 2016
I love the passion of these 19th men and women for butterflies! It was on the point of obsession. I think a quote sums up my take-away from this book: "Today, photographs of butterflies - and of other natural forms - have become so seductive as to sometime serve as substitutes for the real things, interrupting or even blocking contact with the living natural world, a counter-world against which the real one is measured or ignored. In the nineteenth century, pictures were more often allies of contact, inspiring the collector or explorer to pursue nature." This book makes me more than ever want to get outside and learn about and explore my natural surroundings. The more I do it, the more I want to do it. I look back on my childhood and think about how sad it was that I didn't even know the names of the common flora and fauna in my area.
October 24, 2013
I kept reading, hoping I would get to the part where the book got interesting. When I realized it was going to feel like work every time I read it, I stopped reading. Too bad, what a fascinating subject.
February 9, 2015
The subject matter of this book was interesting, but it was written in a very dry style that made it hard to get through. I might have preferred it as a long-form journal article with some of the fat trimmed out.
September 28, 2016
Good book and loved the drawings of butterflies! Highly recommend if you love butterflies and history.
May 17, 2020
I purchased this book eager to read it. I have been fascinated by the work of Holland, Edwards, and Scudder since I was a small child, but I was disappointed by this book. I first started collecting butterflies at age three according to a photo snapped by my father. I was given Comstock's "How to Know the Butterflies" by an uncle, and soon purchased Holland's book. (Surprisingly, there is very little on Comstock in Leach's book.) At age eight or so I was given as a birthday present, a copy of Edwards' "Butterflies of North America." Neighbors thought, correctly, that my father was extravagant and spoiled me with this gift. Opening Leach's book I was eager to learn the lives of these early figures. However, I found the author missed some basic and interesting facts. Edwards' colorist Lydia Brown had also done work on Audubon's bird and mammal books, but the Leach doesn't mention this. Leach should also have written about Edward's collecting and adventures in Virginia City and other wild west mining towns. Perhaps there is no documentation on this, but I imagine some could be found. Also, much more could be said about Holland's relations with Andrew Carnegie. I have been told that Holland had invested in Carnegie "on the ground floor" and was appreciated by the robber baron for this much later. The author is a respected professional historian, but the work is not only lacking in the sense of excitement that could be generated by the topic and characters, but misses some basic factual points of interest.
January 2, 2017
I found this book to be tremendous in its meticulous research and diligence to the butterfly people portrayed. The book was very heavily scientific, which was, once again, a miscalculation of mine. I thought, going in, the book would have a more sociological slant.
Now, for the reason the book only gets 3 stars. Dr. William Barnes. In the book, he is mentioned twice, as "the rich physician." In reality, he founded Decatur Memorial Hospital and upon his death, his immense butterfly collection was purchased by the US government for the Smithsonian in Washington DC. I feel his contribution should have been more fleshed out.
Now, for the reason the book only gets 3 stars. Dr. William Barnes. In the book, he is mentioned twice, as "the rich physician." In reality, he founded Decatur Memorial Hospital and upon his death, his immense butterfly collection was purchased by the US government for the Smithsonian in Washington DC. I feel his contribution should have been more fleshed out.
July 30, 2023
Picked this up on a whim in the Catskills.
This is well researched and, as others have noted, relies (impressively) on mostly primary sources. The book is framed as “An American Encounter with the Beauty of the World” which I feel is not 100% accurate. This is more biography than analysis— the historical context is often ignored or brushed aside and could have (I think) enriched the book overall had it been included.
That said, the biography in itself is impressive and rich, and I appreciate the author detailing both the lives of these butterfly people but also the butterflies themselves.
This is well researched and, as others have noted, relies (impressively) on mostly primary sources. The book is framed as “An American Encounter with the Beauty of the World” which I feel is not 100% accurate. This is more biography than analysis— the historical context is often ignored or brushed aside and could have (I think) enriched the book overall had it been included.
That said, the biography in itself is impressive and rich, and I appreciate the author detailing both the lives of these butterfly people but also the butterflies themselves.
December 10, 2021
Truly fascinating, with an amazing array of strange characters, petty squabbles, and deep-rooted politics - almost in spite of which, the stars of this book achieved a vast amount of success.
I would have preferred more detail and narrative around the collecting expeditions themselves, but this is a great social commentary on the times and vividly captures the passions involved.
I would have preferred more detail and narrative around the collecting expeditions themselves, but this is a great social commentary on the times and vividly captures the passions involved.
May 28, 2024
A beautiful and violent tribute and insightful commentary of humanity and capitalism through the lens of Lepidopterology.
Read
January 2, 2026bratz-nevra
April 14, 2017
A deep eulogy for 19th century naturalists, showing what they learned, why they did it, and what America lost while industrializing from coast to coast. The story starts with serious scientists giddy as children when they encounter the beautiful butterfly specimens throughout America. It ends with one of the last naturalists, deaf in old age, too distracted by the natural beauty around him to realize that he's standing on train tracks and about to be killed.
August 5, 2013
Wonderful scholarship & well written--even for the non-scientific reader. William Leach gives us all an enticing view of those who loved butterflies and willingly gave time, intellect, energy, and resources to develop their passion.
A fun way to learn about the development of science & scientific theory. This books is a must for anyone who is intrigued by the natural world (and who isn't?) and butterflies in particular.
A fun way to learn about the development of science & scientific theory. This books is a must for anyone who is intrigued by the natural world (and who isn't?) and butterflies in particular.
July 15, 2013
In “Butterfly People,” Leach analyzes our relationship with the natural world from a historian’s perspective, by looking at 19th-century Americans who devoted their lives to the study of some of world’s most gorgeous insects. His book is impeccably researched, with an astonishing level of detail about these butterfly-obsessed men (and in rare cases, women). Read the review: http://wapo.st/16EsCPr
May 12, 2014
Lyrical! The author does a great job in telling the story of those who were great butterfly collectors and researchers in the 1800's and early 1900's. William Hall comes out as a bad person while Will Doughtery was a tragic figure who sold his soul for dollars to make Holland and others rich. Great information and a great read!
October 20, 2013
I've been attracted to the cover in bookstores for years, but the style was so deadly dry I couldn't continue -- and I like history from obscure angles, and the history of science.
Read
March 17, 2014Did not finish
Read
April 17, 2014This is an Advance Readers Copy
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews