Amazon.com Review

Neil Shubin Reviews Insectopedia

Insectopedia:

Insectopedia is one of the most remarkable books I have read in a long time. Like its subject, it is many things, all of them fascinating. First, it is a reference book of the first order: it is loaded with facts--some profound, others curious, and still others laugh-out-loud funny. Insectopedia is also part personal memoir, scientific detective story, and even cultural study. We travel the Amazon, visit Chernobyl, and enter laboratories and sidewalk cafes in search of insects and the ideas and cultures they inspire. Insects stir eerie fascination: they are beautiful, disgusting, important, and annoying. To some they are tasty. To others they are a source of sexual fetish. Who knew? In Raffles's hands insects become windows into our culture, science, health--even our psyche. In each page of Insectopedia, the more we learn of insects, the more we come to face--and sometimes even challenge--our own views of the world.

Insectopedia, it's hard to look at a cricket, a bumblebee, and a human being the same way ever again. I adored the book. What an accomplishment. And I thought I knew insects... --Neil Shubin

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Though the title suggests a Latin-heavy lexicon of insects from aphids to wolf spiders , anthropologist Raffles (_In Amazonia_) takes a decidedly different approach in his erudite and entertaining paean to bugs. Some chapters focus on nations: the paradox that in Niger, where crops are regularly ravaged by locusts, that very scourgeÔÇöwhen salted and fried or boiled like shrimpÔÇöis also a protein staple; the craze in Japan for stag and rhinoceros beetles as pets; and the revival of a Chinese traditionÔÇönow televisedÔÇöof crickets locking jaws with the ferocity of fighting dogs. Other sections feature individuals who have dedicated their lives to the contemplation of insects, e.g., the Austrian painter Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, who draws inspiration from radiation-deformed leaf bugs. One short chapter considers same-sex behavior (interspecies ass play); a longer one studies the crush-freaks who fetishize the close-up sight and amplified sound of bugs being crushed by women's feet. Raffles' eclectic examination of our diverse reactions to bugs, ranging from scholarly and aesthetic awe to revulsion or phobia, is an enthralling hodgepodge of historical fact, anthropological observation, and scientific insight. (Mar.)
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