Insect Lives

A weird and wonderful journey into the insect world through literature, science, art, and popular culture Insects inhabit an often unseen world, pursuing strange, tiny, and astonishingly full lives far beyond our wildest imaginings. From the dawn of the written word, humans have recorded their fascination with insects, from Aristotle, the world's first "biologist," to the journals of the nineteenth-century naturalists, to the hyperbolic and highly entertaining science fiction screenplays of the twentieth century. Insect Lives delightfully captures the entire range of our insect preoccupation. This eclectic and absorbing anthology of hard science, thrilling discoveries, and outlandish tales features everything from the Bible to Dave Barry, from Henry David Thoreau to Charles Darwin. Erich Hoyt (North Berwick, Scotland) has written for National Geographic and the New York Times and is the author of The Earth Dwellers: Adventures in the Land of Ants. Ted Schultz, PhD (Washington, DC), is a Smithsonian Institution entomologist and former editor at Whole Earth Review.