Customer Reviews

The Anatomy of Insects & Spiders: Over 600 Exquisite Forms

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Anatomy of Insects admitedly only scratches the surface of entomology, but what it covers is done in exquisite detail. The book begins with a primer on insect anatomy before broadly covering the taxonomy of the major insect orders of beatles, wasps (including bees and ants) termites (including dragonflies and mayflies), butterflies, moths, fleas (and flies), grasshoppers (and crickets), stick insects (including mantises and cockroaches), and spiders.

There is little specific information about each species, but plenty of general information about the order, and enough detail to give the lay reader (such as myself) a good "feel" for the critters. However, the diagrams and plates of the insects are what drew me to the book.

Many of the pictures are from Victorian era prints, some are more recent etchings, but all are remarkable and beautiful in their own right. (I know, who would have thought of "bugs" as beautiful?) It really is an interesting read, with an excellent biliography for further reading if a specific order or genus strikes your fancy; but the depiction of theses small animals is what makes this book such a treasure.

As a biologist, I get my fill of technical language and new terminology. This book is a welcome blend of art, history, and bugs. The reproductions are very well done and I was suprised at the number and variety of sketch-like prints that were included.

Would make a nice gift for a friend who is curious about the natural world.

Great drawings throughout the book. Its technical (as expected from the title being anatomy) but not so technical that you feel like its a lecture. One thing I especially like is that in the descriptions of the insects there is interesting "trivia" that makes this a fun read. Here's a quick excerpt: "the bombardier beetle emits a puff of a volatile chemical, followed by a popping sound, thereby giving it its name. Early naturalists likened this form of defense to humans' use of gunfire."

It is a wonderful book although smaller than I had originally thought and it only includes the "woodblock" cut style images and very little color. But besides being not what I expected, it is truly a fabulous book and I am more than glad I purchased it. I only wish it were bigger scale so I could examine the woodcuts better. Really incredible.

This is a poorly written book without good information. There are only a couple of pages describing anatomical features, one page for insects and another for spiders. Neither insect development or evolutionary relationships are explored. Contrary to the other reviews, the sketches are not very detailed and the text is not very informative. Scales are not even provided for the size of the insects sketched and these 'entomologist' authors did not even identify many of the insects from engravings they printed from drawings done over 100 years ago. The glossary does not even list the few anatomy terms in the book.

One thing I wanted to learn, for example, is why insects have ocelli and compound eyes, but perhaps this knowledge is not to be revealed to the public! It's a real shame that another title published by academics turns out to be more of a farcical dearth than illuminative science. I thought I would learn more from this book about insect development and diversity. Better illustrations can be found in 'Life in the Soil' by James Nardi, which also has much more information.

The more salient feature of this book is that it has illustrations of different families of insects and often shows pupae, larvae, and adults, although numbered rather than labeled and with no scale.

muy bonito pequeño y útil... tiene buenas gráficas y esta bien explicado,, una buena guía para entomología y estudiantes,, no es a color,, pero es muy bueno

I wouldn't recommend this book to the average reader on the grounds that I don't think they will have much of a use for it. I would recommend it to students and professionals as a reference book to have on hand to go with the rest of your personnal library. I have many different insect books myself and have found this one to be somewhat useful though I have many others that I would use before it. I got this one as a bargain book and that's about all I would spend on it. If your like me though you have a lot of different books to compliment this one and they all turn out useful in the end.