Insects Revealed: Monsters or marvels? by Jacques de Tonnancour, translated by Luke Sandford, Comstock/Cornell University Press, 拢23.50/$35, ISBN 0801440238 Reviewed by Deborah Mackenzie
INSECTS, whatever else you say about them, are often utterly beautiful and fascinating to look at. They have been the subject of many a coffee-table book of gorgeous photographs. So how鈥檚 this one different? It鈥檚 written by a Quebec artist with a solid scientific background in bugs and a very French love of philosophical ideas. That鈥檚 a good start.
Jacques de Tonnancour is somewhat defensive about people who hate insects. But he is also a mine of fascinating anecdotes, speculations and explanations about them, from science to philosophy and beyond. These are so engagingly related that you never feel that you鈥檙e reading something educational.
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The book practically asks you to skip about 鈥� over here the myth, common to the Amazon and Madagascar, that moths are human souls, over there a factoid about scarabs (successive Pharaonic dynasties apparently revered different species). And the photos are, of course, stunning.
This would be a lovely book for a child, or an adult, who loves bugs but is put off by the science. There is a lot of science here, but it鈥檚 presented as science ought to be: as marvellous tales about strange and enthralling things. And like all good stories, it isn鈥檛 just about insects, it鈥檚 about us.
