INSECTO-MEDIA: A Book Review of Hugh Raffles’ Insectopedia
A blog about entomology relevant podcasts, documentaries, presentations on line, books, and other media.
Oh, this was a fascinating read! Insectopedia is a collection of 26 essays, styled from A to Z, about particular families, genera, or species of insects and the scientists who study them. Raffles is an award winning science writer (In Amazonia, A Natural History) and an anthropology teacher at The New School.
Because Raffles is an anthropologist, not an entomologist, this collection shows his interest in insects impact on human interactions, customs, economy, beliefs, culture, and history. Some of his chapters include long profiles of the life and work of scientists like Jean-Henri Fabre (wasps) and Karl von Frisch (honey bees).
But Raffles is also an excellent science writer so scientists shouldn’t be put off by his emphasis on culture, history and biography. The book includes an extensive set of chapter notes with references to scientific material, a selected bibliography, and an extensive index.
One gets the impression that Raffles chose certain insects and subjects because he was fascinated by them himself. The wonder of the insect world is very apparent in both his choices and his style of writing.
For example the first chapter, “Air,” is about insects in the air and their migration and dispersal. Raffles reports at length on the history of of the use of airplanes to study insects in the air. In 1926, the first such inventory was made within a column of air from 50 to 14,000 feet above a one square mile of Louisiana countryside. It yielded an average of 25 million insects and as many as 36 million. Raffles’ comments have the intention, I believe, of opening our minds as well as astonishing us: “Thirty six million little animals flying unseen above one square mile of countryside? The heavens opened. The air column was a vault of insect laden air from which fell a continuous rain.”
And that’s just the first of the 26 chapters, some very short and others quite long. In the chapter called Chernobyl, Raffles reports at length on Cornelia Hesse-Honnegger and her research on radiation-caused mutations in insects. A long but fascinating chapter on the cricket market in China covers habitats, collection, maintenance in captivity, markets, traditions, economics, and the personalities of the players in these dramas. A chapter on locusts in Africa is similarly structured.
This book is a wild ride and reading it was the best kind of adventure for me in that so much was new and the treatment was multi-faceted. The reader meets all kinds of insects, not just in biological detail, but also in their cultural, historical and economic contexts and through the scientists who study them. I highly recommend Insectopedia.
Anna reading in a stream!
It’s available as a book or an e-book at Maine Library Interlibrary Loan.
This is the second installment of Insecto-Media by Anna Lee Court, MES member. This review was first published in The Maine Entomologist.
Comments may be made to annaagnesleecourt@gmail.com.
