It's hard for me to rate a book on insects since I used to teach courses at undergraduate and graduate levels in entomology. I have decided to try to see through the eyes of a novice or at least a non-professional. Therefore, partly because there are so few books "out there" for the general reader,especially on a regional basis, I gave the book 4 stars. I was confirmed in my rating when I saw that 2 other readers had given the book only 2 stars:Read on...
The artwork is terrific--the arthropods seem to be a few inches from your eyes. The captions are very general and easy to understand though,due to the targeted audience[novices I believe], more advanced readers might want more specifics. But Hey! It's difficult to generalize about a family of insects with perhaps 100 local species from a view of only one species. And difficult to not mislead readers into thinking that the others of a family even look a lot like the species illustrated let alone have very similar behavioral ecologies. Also, we don't know much about insects; most species are only a scientific name to us; sometimes they are even unnamed. Plenty of "worlds" to discover here! So we have here only a few of the mostly larger, more colorful, or otherwise obvious "bugs",easy notice by a passerby. You also should take time to look for the smallest "bugs" in a pond or on a bush--Put your nose up close: Is any buggy home?
There are a few other good "bug" books available,with many more species illustrated and discussed,but they nearly all include species from all over the U.S.,and most arthropod species occur only in state-sized areas. The best,in my opinion,are Evan's' "Field Guide to Insects and Spiders of North America"[north of Mexico], Marshall's "Insects of Eastern North America", and in the little Golden Guide series, Levi's wonderful "Spiders and Their Kin". There are now also many great books on certain orders or even families of "bugs"--especially butterflies and dragonflies--such as Paulson's "Dragonflies and Damselflies of the West"[all 348 species] or Evans' "Field Guide to Beetles of California" or Pearson's U.S./Canada Tiger Beetles book.
Good looking!
The artwork is terrific--the arthropods seem to be a few inches from your eyes. The captions are very general and easy to understand though,due to the targeted audience[novices I believe], more advanced readers might want more specifics. But Hey! It's difficult to generalize about a family of insects with perhaps 100 local species from a view of only one species. And difficult to not mislead readers into thinking that the others of a family even look a lot like the species illustrated let alone have very similar behavioral ecologies. Also, we don't know much about insects; most species are only a scientific name to us; sometimes they are even unnamed. Plenty of "worlds" to discover here! So we have here only a few of the mostly larger, more colorful, or otherwise obvious "bugs",easy notice by a passerby. You also should take time to look for the smallest "bugs" in a pond or on a bush--Put your nose up close: Is any buggy home?
There are a few other good "bug" books available,with many more species illustrated and discussed,but they nearly all include species from all over the U.S.,and most arthropod species occur only in state-sized areas. The best,in my opinion,are Evan's' "Field Guide to Insects and Spiders of North America"[north of Mexico], Marshall's "Insects of Eastern North America", and in the little Golden Guide series, Levi's wonderful "Spiders and Their Kin". There are now also many great books on certain orders or even families of "bugs"--especially butterflies and dragonflies--such as Paulson's "Dragonflies and Damselflies of the West"[all 348 species] or Evans' "Field Guide to Beetles of California" or Pearson's U.S./Canada Tiger Beetles book.
Good looking!
