Customer Reviews

Bugs in the System: Insects and Their Impact on Human Affairs (Helix Books)

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This book is the best source of insect trivia that I have ever seen! I have used it as a source for questions for the Entomological Society of America Linnaean Games for several years, while I served on one of the ESA branch Linnaean Games committees. It is simply great!

May Berenbaum has a very informal and humorous style that appeals to both the public and students. If, after reading her book, you still think insects are icky or uninteresting you are certainly made of stone. The number of little known facts in this book is simply huge. If you use just one book for reference on insects, Dr. Berenbaum's book would be a very good candidate. She treats everything from the invasion of the cotton boll weevil and the mysterious extinction of the Rocky Mountain locust to insects in movies and as human food.

If you do not like insects or are afraid of them, you really should read this book. It will go a long way toward desensitizing you and make you fascinated with insects instead.

I recommend this book highly to everybody from elementary school to retirement.

Who knew that you could pack in a book SO MUCH information- in nearly every paragraph there is a 'wow' fact- and still make it stimulating and readable throughout. This book is great for professional entomologist and curious, broadly-educated layperson alike. There's actually a surprising amount of history and politics involved in the telling of the role insects have had on earth. Of course, the world of insects is so varied and vast, it alone provides for fascinating exploration. Dr. Berenbaum is an able and entertaining guide. I heartily recommend!

So you've been asked to make a presentation on pest control to your local school,Elk Lodge , or Chamber of Commerce. You want to make a good knowledgeable presentation but where can you go to get good yet digestible information with a bit of humor? I recommend "Bugs In The System" from Perseus Publishing by May R. Berenbaum. This book time and time again has proved an invaluable resource for many projects. May Berenbaum is head of the Entomology Department at the University of Illinois so the scientific aspects are quite sound. What makes this book unique is the portrayal of various insects and their march through time along with us. Classification or "A Rose-chaffer by any other name...." is the first chapter which is then followed by sex , bugs and rock and roll. Each chapter is scientifically accurate but is written with the intelligent general populace in mind. The book is further enlivened with insect quotes , such as "More courtship lives in carrion flies than Romeo" William Shakespeare Romeo & Juliet and interesting as well as humorous photos. As the book progresses the chapters on Parasites and Hosts as well as History of Pest Control offer a real sense of purpose and perspective to our mission in the management of those insects which society has deemed pests. On insects such as mosquitoes a wonderful historical perspective is given on these vectors effect on history and disease. On the other hand we are reminded of the majesty and importance of insects throughout the book especially in the final chapters , Appreciating Insects and Equal Time. Upon concluding the book one truly gains some insight into the various systems that make up our environment as well as the evolution of knowledge in the field of Entomology and Pest Control. The book is excellently laid out in terms of progression from biology to human interaction to pest potential finally concluding with a sound and ecologically balanced view. Each chapter carries plenty of references and the appendix is an excellent key to insect orders. As a resource as well as a requirement I heartily recommend this book.

A fairly good textbook, yet one thing almost vital to the subject: pictures. When describing some of the anatomical parts of insects, it becomes very easy to get jumbled up. A simple diagram could fix that. Overall, a good textbook.

In "Bugs in the System", Berenbaum sets out to counter the common perception of bugs as boring and icky. "There is no other life form on the planet," she writes, "whose lives are as inextricably bound up with our own....most people are completely unaware of the extent to which life and culture are shaped by insects." With masterful storytelling and flashes of wry humor, Berenbaum explores the role of insects in the human economy, in the disasters of war, and as the unseen, though vital, architects of our ecosystem.

Tropical ants, for example, sometimes function as the "gardeners" of rainforest canopy biota, where they cultivate and guard the plant species on which they depend from predators and other competitors. Pollination, of course, is the most important contribution of insects to human society. Migratory bee keepers - a huge agricultural industry - follow the seasons to keep their bees busy year round; for a fee, they fertilize fruits, beans and many other staple crops, in addition to producing honey. Without them, countless plant species would fail to reproduce.

Less well known are the roles of termites and other detritivores, Berenbaum writes, "spectacular consumers of dead, decayed, or otherwise seemingly inedible foodstuffs." They help to prevent wood, leaves, and animal products from collecting as toxins in the ecosystem. The introduction of cattle into Australia, for example, disrupted the recycle role of outback dung beetles, who had evolved alongside the marsupials. Soon "cattle dung accumulated at an alarming rate", which spawned huge populations of pest flies and choked the land. Only the introduction of forty-four non-native species - in the Dung Beetle Project - allowed the cattle and dairy industries to thrive in Australia.

Unfortunately, Berenbaum says, insects are perhaps also man's worst enemy. Many insect parasites have developed clever survival tactics. Lice and fleas, for example, have unusually tough exoskeletons, and are often flat, almost two dimensional; this way, they can withstand our efforts to crush them. To anchor themselves on the skin of their hosts, they have backward-pointing spines, which are surprisingly resilient barbs. On the other hand, mosquitoes and horse flies are extremely nimble navigators, expert at frustrating our slapping hands.

As the vectors of disease, parasitic insects have had an enormous impact on human history, which Berenbaum chronicles in fascinating detail. In the Fourteenth Century, the flea-borne pneumonic plague decimated Medieval Europe, eventually killing a third of the population. Because the supply of labor fell so low, Aristocratic landowners were forced to pay higher wages and grant other concessions to serfs and laborers; they never fully recovered their power. Labor, it seems, owes one of its great early victories to bugs. During times of war, concentrated groups of soldiers became an ideal breeding grounds for lice, the notorious carriers of typhus. Napoleon lost over 300,000 troops to typhus, Berenbaum reports, a decisive setback in his Russian campaign; similar losses of life, rivalling those from war wounds, occurred during the Crimean War of 1854 and during World War I.

One secret of insect success, according to Berenbaum, is their extraordinary diversity. Because insects breed quickly and prolifically, the natural mutations of successive generations make them into veritable evolution machines. Whatever environmental challenges (or opportunities) they face - cold weather, pesticides like DDT, or the sudden scarcity of traditional food sources - insects eventually find a way to survive and thrive. While their vertebrate competitors, including humans, can take decades or centuries to evolve genetically, insects can adapt in only months, perhaps even days. As supremely imaginative survivors, it is the insects who may one day inherit the Earth.

Written at about the undergraduate level, "Bugs in the System" is an excellent introduction to the scientific study of insects. Berenbaum spins countless tales of insect esoterica, from the artful description of insect genitalia - a tool to distinguish related species - to the many fruitless attempts to develop effective, though environmentally safe pesticides. She also explores the history of human perceptions and uses of insects, including a lengthy treatise on the varieties of gourmet bug dishes.

While Berenbaum is a talented writer and competent scientist, she rarely ventures to the frontiers of her field. I frequently found myself hungering for more detail, and hoped to discover some provocative thesis behind her stories. Instead, she chose to ignore the new theories on collective intelligence - the "hive mind" - of insect societies that computer scientists and complexity theorists are developing, or the impact of the gaia hypothesis on the study of insect ecology.

Recommended.

This book was so good! It provided me with everything I wanted to know about the insect world. It also included some humor (i.e. Reproduction chaper intitled "Sex, Bugs, and Rock & Roll). I recommend this to everyone who wants to know about how precious insects are to our life.

The product arrived on time and it was exactly what I ordered. It was also for a very good price. It was in perfect condition.