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Insectopedia
A New York Times Notable BookA stunningly original exploration of the ties that bind us to the beautiful, ancient, astoundingly accomplished, largely unknown, and unfathomably different species with whom we share the world. For as long as humans have existed, insects have been our constant companions. Yet we hardly know them, not even the ones we’re closest those that eat our food, share our beds, and live in our homes. Organizing his book alphabetically, Hugh Raffles weaves together brief vignettes, meditations, and extended essays, taking the reader on a mesmerizing exploration of history and science, anthropology and travel, economics, philosophy, and popular culture. Insectopedia shows us how insects have triggered our obsessions, stirred our passions, and beguiled our imaginations.
482 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews
July 12, 2021
To be perfectly honest, I only borrowed Insectopedia (the 2011 paperback edition that is) on Open Library yesterday morning because I was quite also assuming from the book title of Insectopedia that author Hugh Raffles’ featured narrative would of course be primarily and first and foremost a general A to Z alphabetically organised introduction to insects. But after realising that the entire set-up of Insectopedia is in fact NOT an alphabetical dictionary type of narrative AT ALL but rather twenty-six (supposedly) insect themed essays (and yes, with a great deal of reading disappointment and annoyance at having basically been mislead and deceived by the clearly assuming to be encyclopedic book title), I decided to not n fact bother reading Insectopedia from cover to cover but to just do a cursory skim through a few of Hugh Raffles’ featured essays for reference, and in order to get a general feel for both Raffles as an author and for his general textual information on and about insects.
And indeed, aside from my above mentioned issues regarding the non dictionary like set-up of Insectopedia and that I was definitely expecting something completely and totally different from what in my opinion the title of this livre is actually telling us as potential readers to expect and look for, my skimming of the essays of Insectopedia which I had chosen to consider, yes, this has also and equally not only been a major personal reading annoyance and frustration, but equally makes me not keen whatsoever on even remotely wanting to peruse Insectopedia in its entirety, on finishing reading. Because honestly, while there does seem to be much of scientific and biological interest and merit present within Hugh Raffles’s text, locating this all within his essays, within Raffles’ articles on insects is in my humble opinion quite unnecessarily confusing and difficult, for indeed, it does seem to often be too much buried within a rather rambling and in my opinion generally too deliberately densely academic and convoluted writing style (and thus certainly not enjoyable and sufficiently easy to understand to and for those of us who are not entomologists, to and for those of us who are not academics with advanced university based scientific knowledge and biology degrees).
Furthermore and finally, that quite a number of the Insectopedia articles are in fact rather problematically off-topic, are actually more about in particular Hugh Raffles musing and pontificating not so much about insects but about the Third Reich, Nazism, Franz Kafka etc., while this type of information actually very much interests me on an academic and historical, cultural level, sorry, but this all really has nothing to do with insects as animals, with the biology, the physiology, the behaviour and life cycles of insects. And indeed, this in particular really has made me decide to DNF Insectopedia (with my ONLY reason for rating Insectopedia with two stars and not with one star being that I do appreciate Hugh Raffles having included a very thorough and detailed bibliography and that he also provides the necessary secondary source acknowledgments).
And indeed, aside from my above mentioned issues regarding the non dictionary like set-up of Insectopedia and that I was definitely expecting something completely and totally different from what in my opinion the title of this livre is actually telling us as potential readers to expect and look for, my skimming of the essays of Insectopedia which I had chosen to consider, yes, this has also and equally not only been a major personal reading annoyance and frustration, but equally makes me not keen whatsoever on even remotely wanting to peruse Insectopedia in its entirety, on finishing reading. Because honestly, while there does seem to be much of scientific and biological interest and merit present within Hugh Raffles’s text, locating this all within his essays, within Raffles’ articles on insects is in my humble opinion quite unnecessarily confusing and difficult, for indeed, it does seem to often be too much buried within a rather rambling and in my opinion generally too deliberately densely academic and convoluted writing style (and thus certainly not enjoyable and sufficiently easy to understand to and for those of us who are not entomologists, to and for those of us who are not academics with advanced university based scientific knowledge and biology degrees).
Furthermore and finally, that quite a number of the Insectopedia articles are in fact rather problematically off-topic, are actually more about in particular Hugh Raffles musing and pontificating not so much about insects but about the Third Reich, Nazism, Franz Kafka etc., while this type of information actually very much interests me on an academic and historical, cultural level, sorry, but this all really has nothing to do with insects as animals, with the biology, the physiology, the behaviour and life cycles of insects. And indeed, this in particular really has made me decide to DNF Insectopedia (with my ONLY reason for rating Insectopedia with two stars and not with one star being that I do appreciate Hugh Raffles having included a very thorough and detailed bibliography and that he also provides the necessary secondary source acknowledgments).
September 10, 2015
I thought this was pretty brilliant. As much about art and Hugh and various oddities of the world as about insects. And that's fine. We are all in this together. Stag beetles and collectors of stag beetles. Crickets and people who like to watch (and gamble) in the gladiatorial arena of crickets. Quirky and profound.
May 9, 2010
This book is incredibly researched and covers quite a bit of territory. Insects aren't always the main characters though. Often the author writes more about the people than the insects. For example, one chapter focuses on people in Japan who breed and sell giant beetles; another chapter focused on the holocaust under that guise that the Germans referred to Jews and other victims as lice (insects) and are better off dead. Many of the chapters reminded me of the writing of Stephen Jay Gould who wrote a monthly column in Natural History Magazine when he was alive. I didn't always understand what he was writing about because he was extremely intellectual and assumed more knowledge on the readers' part than I had. He would seemingly randomly change subjects, but eventually tie all the loose ends together at the end of his essays. Hugh Raffles used the same technique several times. I really appreciated the chapters on how insects see, how Karl von Frisch studied the behavior of bees, homosexuality in insects and more. The long chapter on sex was devoted almost exclusively to crush videos and the people behind them--this is where a woman would squish insects on a video with her high heels so men could watch, get turned on and masturbate. This seemed really obscure to me until I saw recently that these videos have escalated to crushing small mammals. This book is worth reading if you're willing to scan some chapters as you delve into others.
May 17, 2010
Not a “pedia” (or paideia) in any direct sense, but a series of essays, most apparently previously published, arranged under more-or-less arbitrary alphabetical headings.
Raffles is an academic (Chair and Professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research) and can write like one. Here he is describing his previous book "In Amazonia, A Natural History" (Princeton University Press, 2002) in "Towards a Critical Natural History," Antipode (2005):
"‘In Amazonia’ is an ethnographic natural history, the product of a method and an epistemology without guarantees, a messy and painful politics. This is not a legislative project. I offer it as just one approach to a set of problems of broad interest, and I’m pleased to see that it has succeeded in generating debate and analysis. But – and this is an inevitability I believe we should embrace – though it may contribute its own situated materialdiscursivity (sic), this is an assemblage that can only approximate its task of describing a naturalcultural (sic) world animated by difference, power, and history, a world that will always exceed our languages and imaginings, a world without beginning, end, or outside.”
In this volume Raffles probably uses “ontological” and “ontologically” more than “entomological” or “entomologically” and regularly resorts, from either personal or professional idiosyncrasy, to unusual and/or obscure formulations requiring multiple readings for what might otherwise have been fairly simple statements.
If, however, one exercises the patience such habits demand, Instectopedia offers much to interest, please and provoke: essays on the extermination of Jews and lice, the culture and economics of cricket fighting in contemporary China, the roles and reading of entomological illustration, the local experience of locust swarming in Niger, the insect crush video phenomenon (pre the April 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in U.S. v. Stevens), etc.
Most of the pieces incorporate Raffles’ own in situ investigation and reportage, and while it is very much the work of an anthropologist, it is for me, finally, the author’s work at empathy for his nonhuman as well as human subjects which redeems it. I am (easily) pleased merely to hear insects consistently spoken of as animals; Raffles consistently demonstrates his awareness of them as individuals. Granting them an authentic personal ontological status, that is.
January 12, 2021
Couldn't put it down. This book will have you feeling a like a proud member of the superorganism!
December 1, 2014
I was more interested in reading this guy's other book, In Amazonia, but since they didn't have it at my library I decided to just read this one. I actually have been getting more interested in the insect world lately anyway. While experimenting with entomophagy and spending more time catching and killing insects I started to get better acquainted with them and developed more appreciation for them as fellow cohabitants of this planet. So I've been thinking more about how strange their experiences must be, how important they are ecologically, how robotic yet full of personality they actually are and how to minimize their suffering when I decide to eat them (I first tried drowning them in the jar I caught them in, thinking it would be quick but found out that grasshoppers can survive hours submerged, probably panicking and suffering the whole time, which obviously makes me feel like kind of an asshole. Then I tried cutting their heads off and found that without a head they act almost exactly the same, not just random muscle contractions but actually standing themselves up properly balanced and hopping away as if still alive! Now I just put them in the freezer to calm them down and cook them alive, which kills them more or less instantly since they're so small.)
I did read some of the reviews before starting the book so I knew to expect something more philosophical than entomological. I was kind of expecting it to be more about ethno-entomology though and technically it is at times but it's mostly a weird combination of info on entomologists and random bizarre practices and things that have some tenuous connection to bugs. There's a full chapter on the Holocaust because Jews were compared to lice and exterminated with chemicals that are also used for insecticide. Others include "inter-species ass play" and a sexual fetish for crushing bugs and other small animals with your feet, which he surprisingly seems to be defending for the most part, mentioning that the guy most vilified by the media for doing this is actually a vegan animal-rights activist. Things like this seem pretty out of place for a book with a title and cover that makes it feel like a good one for a middle-school kid doing a biology project or something. And I also have kind of a pet peeve for scientists that denounce the mechanical body metaphor. Yes, when taken totally literally and over-simplified it has been used to justify horrible things, just like Darwin's theories somehow led to the eugenics movement and sustainable egalitarian cultures have been wiped out in the name of scientific progress. Completely distancing ourselves from such things though is the same logic you see from kids who hate their parents generation enough to dress and talk like complete idiots and hippies who reject ALL work, hygiene, social obligations, etc. People who actually get the idea, however, have realized more of a need for rehabilitation over punishment, treating root causes instead of symptoms, etc. Even though it can sound kind of derogatory, and pretty eerie frankly, I think as a metaphor it's fine to compare living bodies to machines. Denying the similarities really isn't any less dangerous.
There is some good, interesting stuff in here though. Despite all the time spent talking about insects kept in terrariums as pets and specimens for science projects he does try to create the impression that these creatures do deserve better than this, at one point quoting the Sting song, "If you love somebody set them free." He also gets into things like the impossibility of humans ever fully understanding how insects see the world, saying that vision is as much about culture, your values and your body's other senses as it is about eye mechanisms. And while not as much as most would expect from the title, there is still enough info on specific insects to satisfy most non-experts on the subject. Overall I can see why so many were disappointed with it but ignoring the false advertising it's not too bad.
I did read some of the reviews before starting the book so I knew to expect something more philosophical than entomological. I was kind of expecting it to be more about ethno-entomology though and technically it is at times but it's mostly a weird combination of info on entomologists and random bizarre practices and things that have some tenuous connection to bugs. There's a full chapter on the Holocaust because Jews were compared to lice and exterminated with chemicals that are also used for insecticide. Others include "inter-species ass play" and a sexual fetish for crushing bugs and other small animals with your feet, which he surprisingly seems to be defending for the most part, mentioning that the guy most vilified by the media for doing this is actually a vegan animal-rights activist. Things like this seem pretty out of place for a book with a title and cover that makes it feel like a good one for a middle-school kid doing a biology project or something. And I also have kind of a pet peeve for scientists that denounce the mechanical body metaphor. Yes, when taken totally literally and over-simplified it has been used to justify horrible things, just like Darwin's theories somehow led to the eugenics movement and sustainable egalitarian cultures have been wiped out in the name of scientific progress. Completely distancing ourselves from such things though is the same logic you see from kids who hate their parents generation enough to dress and talk like complete idiots and hippies who reject ALL work, hygiene, social obligations, etc. People who actually get the idea, however, have realized more of a need for rehabilitation over punishment, treating root causes instead of symptoms, etc. Even though it can sound kind of derogatory, and pretty eerie frankly, I think as a metaphor it's fine to compare living bodies to machines. Denying the similarities really isn't any less dangerous.
There is some good, interesting stuff in here though. Despite all the time spent talking about insects kept in terrariums as pets and specimens for science projects he does try to create the impression that these creatures do deserve better than this, at one point quoting the Sting song, "If you love somebody set them free." He also gets into things like the impossibility of humans ever fully understanding how insects see the world, saying that vision is as much about culture, your values and your body's other senses as it is about eye mechanisms. And while not as much as most would expect from the title, there is still enough info on specific insects to satisfy most non-experts on the subject. Overall I can see why so many were disappointed with it but ignoring the false advertising it's not too bad.
March 23, 2021
Insects or non-insects, it doesn't matter. there is so much about life and history in this, as well as bugs. A lot of philosophy too. The book is set up, as an encyclopedia is or a dictionary is, alphabetically...not by the names of bugs, such as Ant, Bee, Caterpillar, but rather: Air, Beauty, Chernobyl, Death, Evolution, Fever/Dream, Generosity (the Happy Times), Heads and How to Use Them, The Ineffable, Jews, Kafka, Language, My Nightmares, Nepal, On January 8, 2008, Abdou Mahamane Was Driving through Niamey, Il Parco delle Cascine on Ascension Sunday, The Quality of Quyeerness Is Not Strange Enough, The Deepestof Reveries, Sex, Temptation, The Unseen, Vision, The Sound of Global Warming, Ex Libris, Exempla, Yearnings, Zen and the Art of Zzz's..... and then a lot of footnotes, and finally a bibliography and index.
There is info on the dancing language of bees; Owl-flies, and lots of history involving humans and literature. It's sort of a book you would want to dip into, keep by your bed. It's not just insects, it's human history too, and other animals and some very unpleasant things about Nazis. My copy is from the library, so I have limited time, but would like to take it out again and dip again...and again.
I think I might like to try a couple of other books Raffles has written. A lot of the other reviews of this particular book are one or two stars because the book is not actually an encyclopedia of insects. But it doesn't have to be. Surely there are guidebooks, each page with a photo of the insect in its different stages, with lots of scientific info. I am a human who has always been interested in insects as fellow beings, and I save drowning insects from the birdbath, and hate to kill and apologize for each pantry moth I crush between my palms. I have cried while trying to help a dying insect with waving legs and antennae, and then I bury it. I let spiders go, and catch flies and put them outside. So there.
~ Linda Campbell Franklin
There is info on the dancing language of bees; Owl-flies, and lots of history involving humans and literature. It's sort of a book you would want to dip into, keep by your bed. It's not just insects, it's human history too, and other animals and some very unpleasant things about Nazis. My copy is from the library, so I have limited time, but would like to take it out again and dip again...and again.
I think I might like to try a couple of other books Raffles has written. A lot of the other reviews of this particular book are one or two stars because the book is not actually an encyclopedia of insects. But it doesn't have to be. Surely there are guidebooks, each page with a photo of the insect in its different stages, with lots of scientific info. I am a human who has always been interested in insects as fellow beings, and I save drowning insects from the birdbath, and hate to kill and apologize for each pantry moth I crush between my palms. I have cried while trying to help a dying insect with waving legs and antennae, and then I bury it. I let spiders go, and catch flies and put them outside. So there.
~ Linda Campbell Franklin
April 11, 2010
Bought this as a read-aloud for our Spring Break loop through the South. A rave review in the Guardian (followed by one in the NYT) made it sound like just the thing to entertain our combination of 15- and 50-year-olds.
Not so.
Raffles suffers from a severe case of cutetitus, exacerbated by the fug of his hot house prose. The subject of the individual sections may or may not be interesting, but the subject is beside the point as what we're really directed to look at is his language. Where was the editor for this? Do readers really like these "wink, wink" hijinks?
On the other hand, I recently swapped out of the bathroom the Guardian's book of obituaries for John Emsley's "Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements." I have to yell at the teenager to get out of the bathroom now. No, he's not doing in hair, he's "addicted" (his word) to information about fluorine, neon, phosphorous. Emsley's prose is everything Raffles' is not: elegant and to the point. Here, the story is the star, not the author's metaphorical acrobatics.
Not so.
Raffles suffers from a severe case of cutetitus, exacerbated by the fug of his hot house prose. The subject of the individual sections may or may not be interesting, but the subject is beside the point as what we're really directed to look at is his language. Where was the editor for this? Do readers really like these "wink, wink" hijinks?
On the other hand, I recently swapped out of the bathroom the Guardian's book of obituaries for John Emsley's "Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements." I have to yell at the teenager to get out of the bathroom now. No, he's not doing in hair, he's "addicted" (his word) to information about fluorine, neon, phosphorous. Emsley's prose is everything Raffles' is not: elegant and to the point. Here, the story is the star, not the author's metaphorical acrobatics.
February 5, 2011
I only gave this book two stars, but that's not to say it wasn't well-written. I understand the good reviews and think some would love it. First of all, I was was fooled by the title, thinking this to be a narrative encyclopedia of insects. Instead it is a group of 26 essays, sort of about bugs. I really wanted to read a book about insects, not the ives of people involved with insects, or insects as metaphors for people. I don't read a lot of non-fiction outside of my profession, so I wanted to force myself through the book, just to say I could. Wish I had enjoyed it more.
May 13, 2014
There were some interesting essays in here, especially the one about bees and another about homosexual animal pairings; but for the most part this wasn't really my cup of tea. It's my bad- I thought this was more of a science book, but it's actually a collection of a few nature-y essays and mostly just general thoughts from the author that he ties to insects in a roundabout sort of way.
May 24, 2013
Almost unreadable. Didn't imbibe me with the love for the class I was hoping for. He should stop writing, he's not terribly good at it. Dwells on details that would make a Victorian yawn, shout "get on with it!" at their empty reading room.
January 9, 2021
I kept reading, chapter after chapter, hoping it would get interesting, but it never did. What's the problem? The stories are not engaging. Why? Too removed, not compelling. I don't think Hugh was in his best story-telling mode here. Too bad, I wanted very much to like it.
May 30, 2020
3.5 stars. Some of the essays were extremely interesting, others not so much. The author does provide a lot of notes and references for additional info.
December 25, 2020
Wonderful writing, but the subject matter is not what I expected. Insects were a passing thought in most chapters.
April 23, 2023
Афтар сойджек кукож и либераха, некоторые главы хороши, но в основном мучаешься.
Носикомых мала, а оформление - максимально уебанское, хуже представить сложно, текст на обоих страницах сдвинут влево на 1/4, фотографии занимают оставшуюся часть, разглядеть хоть что-то невозможно без лупы, за которую нас заводит афтар
Носикомых мала, а оформление - максимально уебанское, хуже представить сложно, текст на обоих страницах сдвинут влево на 1/4, фотографии занимают оставшуюся часть, разглядеть хоть что-то невозможно без лупы, за которую нас заводит афтар
February 8, 2021
I waver between 3.5, 4, and 5 to rate the chapters in this collected essays book. This is what happens when you follow your obsession in research and curiousity. You end up dedicating a large portion of your time and commitment to delve into the insects world. Not easy because insects are tiny and not beautiful except for a few.
He began with the most beautiful and engrossing chapters of this book.
The indomitable female insect illustrator Cornelia Hesse Honegger who challenged the boundaries of art and science through her technical drawings. Her compassion and eye for her insects have shown their deformity due to nuclear contamination. The now almost forgotten John Henri Fabre, whose name remains as a Paris metro stop, but lived in a magical world of insect documentation. His description of his life and commitment transported me to his manor in the French rural south abuzz with insects. These are truly examples of the animal and human network analysis popular in anthropology where attempts to interpret the animal perspective is examined in detail through insect morphology and interpretations of animal behaviour. Truly remarkable.
I definitely appreciate his exegesis into his fieldwork notes. He shares some of his reflective moments in the Amazonian jungle and periods of insect beauty amidst the hot and deathly humid and discomfort of life. Brave to say the least. Insane.
Everything else falls short of these ethereal essays. It depends on your personal favourites. What I was truly disappointed were these other chapters fall into the typical human animal text that predominantly favours the human perspective forgetting the animal part. Like, what happens to the crickets when they are dumped in the bucket ready to be thrown out? How about their rejuvenation in the natural world in Shanghai? I feel he could have given us more scientific info about the animal aspect which is lacking in the locusts in the Sahel and loss of habitat in Florence. There's too many entries that you can't blame the author for having to edit out the chapters leaving his favourites like Japan which was too long for me.
This book deserves all its accolades and anthropologists should be proud of having one of their own write popular books that titillate the imagination and nostalgia of childhoods. Some essays are prime examples of how to write animal human interaction for students. Overall, you can read this for pleasure and choose sections that would personally interest you. There are lots to choose from and you can skip the others. It doesn't detract from its overall strength. My book club colleagues attest this is similar to the book Alien Ocean but I disagree. It is not of the same writing or thought caliber but they only share a similar exercise of inhabiting non human worlds. We need more of it.
He began with the most beautiful and engrossing chapters of this book.
The indomitable female insect illustrator Cornelia Hesse Honegger who challenged the boundaries of art and science through her technical drawings. Her compassion and eye for her insects have shown their deformity due to nuclear contamination. The now almost forgotten John Henri Fabre, whose name remains as a Paris metro stop, but lived in a magical world of insect documentation. His description of his life and commitment transported me to his manor in the French rural south abuzz with insects. These are truly examples of the animal and human network analysis popular in anthropology where attempts to interpret the animal perspective is examined in detail through insect morphology and interpretations of animal behaviour. Truly remarkable.
I definitely appreciate his exegesis into his fieldwork notes. He shares some of his reflective moments in the Amazonian jungle and periods of insect beauty amidst the hot and deathly humid and discomfort of life. Brave to say the least. Insane.
Everything else falls short of these ethereal essays. It depends on your personal favourites. What I was truly disappointed were these other chapters fall into the typical human animal text that predominantly favours the human perspective forgetting the animal part. Like, what happens to the crickets when they are dumped in the bucket ready to be thrown out? How about their rejuvenation in the natural world in Shanghai? I feel he could have given us more scientific info about the animal aspect which is lacking in the locusts in the Sahel and loss of habitat in Florence. There's too many entries that you can't blame the author for having to edit out the chapters leaving his favourites like Japan which was too long for me.
This book deserves all its accolades and anthropologists should be proud of having one of their own write popular books that titillate the imagination and nostalgia of childhoods. Some essays are prime examples of how to write animal human interaction for students. Overall, you can read this for pleasure and choose sections that would personally interest you. There are lots to choose from and you can skip the others. It doesn't detract from its overall strength. My book club colleagues attest this is similar to the book Alien Ocean but I disagree. It is not of the same writing or thought caliber but they only share a similar exercise of inhabiting non human worlds. We need more of it.
January 5, 2011
Hard to put stars to this one because it was so not what I was expecting. When "-pedia" is used as a suffix, I generally expect something encyclopedic, covering a breadth of the topic with some depth, objectivity and detail. Instead this is a series of 26 essays (each titled with a word starting with successive letters of the alphabet) on seemingly random topics that sometimes were only peripherally connected to the world of insects.
Some of the essays were very, very good. A couple of the strongest were only a couple of pages long, but captured the awesome beauty of millions of nomadic butterflies or the music of thousands of singing cicadas. The language of bees was explored in one, including not only how they communicate with each other, but how scientists figured it out. One titled "Jews" expounded upon Heinrich Himmler's infamous quote about antisemitism: "Antisemitism is exactly the same as delousing. Getting rid of lice is not a question of ideology. It is a matter of cleanliness." Mr. Raffles dissects the dehumanizing process the Nazis used to destroy millions of Jews by closely examining lice and our uneasy relationship with these parasitic blood-sucking bugs. It was fascinating.
But then there were several that made my eyes glaze over. 40 pages on the big beetles collecting craze in Japan. A seriously disturbing essay on foot fetishes and crush videos. Four pages detailing all the different nightmares you can have about bugs. And lots of others that just didn't catch my attention after I started skimming.
For more book reviews, come visit my blog, Build Enough Bookshelves.
Some of the essays were very, very good. A couple of the strongest were only a couple of pages long, but captured the awesome beauty of millions of nomadic butterflies or the music of thousands of singing cicadas. The language of bees was explored in one, including not only how they communicate with each other, but how scientists figured it out. One titled "Jews" expounded upon Heinrich Himmler's infamous quote about antisemitism: "Antisemitism is exactly the same as delousing. Getting rid of lice is not a question of ideology. It is a matter of cleanliness." Mr. Raffles dissects the dehumanizing process the Nazis used to destroy millions of Jews by closely examining lice and our uneasy relationship with these parasitic blood-sucking bugs. It was fascinating.
But then there were several that made my eyes glaze over. 40 pages on the big beetles collecting craze in Japan. A seriously disturbing essay on foot fetishes and crush videos. Four pages detailing all the different nightmares you can have about bugs. And lots of others that just didn't catch my attention after I started skimming.
For more book reviews, come visit my blog, Build Enough Bookshelves.
December 31, 2015
[copied from my Amazon review]
Insectopedia is an intriguing study of the human world through its relationships with insects. Why do we have such a visceral revulsion to cockroaches, but not (for example) ladybugs? What does the intricate communication methods of bees (physical movement), pine beetles (auditory), and ants (chemical) say about our verbal language? How does a fly process visual information -- and can we ever really "see" from another creature's viewpoint?
Particularly interesting chapters include a first hand account of Chinese cricket fighting, the history of the theory of evolution through insect study, and the amazing chapter about honeybee dances -- great cocktail party fodder! Did you know researchers can translate bees' dances into coordinates (as in, "there's a great stash of spilled jam 90 yards to the southeast")? Who *doesn't* find this stuff fascinating?!
The author is an anthropologist, not an entomologist. If you're looking for a simple guide to insects, this is not the book you're looking for. But if you're curious about how the worlds of insects and humans collide, Insectopedia is an interesting read. You know that insects outnumber humans by some 200 million to one, right? I, for one, welcome the knowledge about our future insect overlords.
Insectopedia is an intriguing study of the human world through its relationships with insects. Why do we have such a visceral revulsion to cockroaches, but not (for example) ladybugs? What does the intricate communication methods of bees (physical movement), pine beetles (auditory), and ants (chemical) say about our verbal language? How does a fly process visual information -- and can we ever really "see" from another creature's viewpoint?
Particularly interesting chapters include a first hand account of Chinese cricket fighting, the history of the theory of evolution through insect study, and the amazing chapter about honeybee dances -- great cocktail party fodder! Did you know researchers can translate bees' dances into coordinates (as in, "there's a great stash of spilled jam 90 yards to the southeast")? Who *doesn't* find this stuff fascinating?!
The author is an anthropologist, not an entomologist. If you're looking for a simple guide to insects, this is not the book you're looking for. But if you're curious about how the worlds of insects and humans collide, Insectopedia is an interesting read. You know that insects outnumber humans by some 200 million to one, right? I, for one, welcome the knowledge about our future insect overlords.
Read
August 15, 2011Okay, maybe I'm cheating because I didn't read this all the way through. But I read the larger portion of it--enough to be ambivalent. I love the idea behind this book. It's aimed to generate thoughtfulness about the most prolific class of creatures on the planet. It's organized into twenty-six essays, one for each letter of the alphabet (<3 organization). The topics are absolutely fascinating: the amount of insects in the air above our heads, the artist who paints leaf bugs in excruciating detail (but only damaged ones from the regions around nuclear reactors), the Chinese cricket fighting phenomenon. Raffles seems to be a creative fellow--but the inescapable fact is that he's an academic at heart, not an essayist. He goes on too long. He delights in theoretical orientations. He inspires mild philosophical interest, not a naturalist's wonder, at the world around him (which is ironic, since he makes fierce critiques of an academic approach to nature). Far be it that I should hold all this against him, since that's clearly just the way he thinks. But in the end, the payoff was too little for me to spend more time following him around.
June 2, 2010
Insects are everywhere and nowhere, right. We see them under rocks and in the basement and sometimes buzzing around but we don't factor them into life as we do with a dog or bird or even a panda bear.
I constantly try and get my girls to appreciate insects - we found a bettle today with just 5 legs and observed it for a while.
This book is a set of vignettes, organized from A to Z in a uneccessary cutesey way, that tells about all manner of bugs, catepillars, fruit flies, crickets, head lice, bees, wasps, etc.
The reader learns a little about each insect via a brief narrative that involves a person.
For instance - Karl von Frisch, a German who studied honeybees and learned about how they dance - did some of the most amazing observations but the details of his efforts are largely unknown.
This isn't really an easy book to follow but there is enough in it to make for a good summer read.
I constantly try and get my girls to appreciate insects - we found a bettle today with just 5 legs and observed it for a while.
This book is a set of vignettes, organized from A to Z in a uneccessary cutesey way, that tells about all manner of bugs, catepillars, fruit flies, crickets, head lice, bees, wasps, etc.
The reader learns a little about each insect via a brief narrative that involves a person.
For instance - Karl von Frisch, a German who studied honeybees and learned about how they dance - did some of the most amazing observations but the details of his efforts are largely unknown.
This isn't really an easy book to follow but there is enough in it to make for a good summer read.
February 3, 2011
Not really the book I thought it presented itself to be. Not so much about insects as it is about the people who have studied them or who work with them in some capacity. I got some interesting info out of it but honestly it was like reading a textbook. In fact, it wasn't quite that cohesive. Many times I had no idea who Raffles was quoting by the time he was done explaining who wrote what in what book by someone else - it was exhausting. Sections inside each chapter are not well connected although it seems he went out of his way to connect the chapters themselves - that actually have nothing to do with each other (more or less). I consider myself a closet scientist - I am fascinated with insects, I keep bees and have raised butterflies, etc. but I would not recommend this to anyone but the most astute reader and insect lover who is willing to put up with the convoluted writing.
September 14, 2018
Not what I was expecting at all. It was well written and all, but I wanted stories of insects and I got stories of people. I really enjoyed some of the chapters. Cricket fighting in China, insect culture in Japan, locusts in Africa for example but some chapters I really disliked. I think the name of the book was misleading.
November 30, 2020
I enjoyed Insectopedia for the most part. Some sections were fascinating and I was able to fill many conversations with "did you knows". However, there were also plenty of sections (especially towards the end) that did not hold my interest at all. Three stars because I don't think I would ever re-read this book in its entirety, though I could see myself returning to certain chapters.
April 13, 2020
I thought I was going to get a well-written, engaging and informative book about insects. Instead the book was filled with a bunch of rambling essays that had more to do with the author's philosophical attitude toward bugs and their relationship with humans. Not informative or inspiring.
July 24, 2011
Terrible writing. As a voracious reader of science writing I was looking forward to this book, but I barely got through two or three chapters. Disappointing.
May 19, 2014
I gave up on this. Not my thing
January 23, 2019
Maybe I'm just uncomfortable with the subject matter, but I feel like this one took a significant turn around essay "Q".
November 12, 2019
Although this non-fiction book about insects had to have been extensively researched, the only thing I liked about it is the clever book cover.
March 21, 2020
I reached page 117, but was fed up with reading about humans instead of insects.
November 27, 2020
A social and literary history. Crickets. Nightmares. Not what I expected. Skim read.
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