Insectopeida

Well, I guess I was a bit disappointed by this book, but that probably reflects the hardening of my brain cells more than anything else. Raffles book is well written and extremely far ranging -- he is after all, an essayist by profession, not an entomologist. His true subject is not so much the Arthropoda as Homo Sapiens, and in examining how people have thought about insects throughout history, he sheds at least as much light on what it means to be human as what it means to be insect.

The book is an intellectual journey that takes us to different cultures and times where insects or their images variously represent tasty treats, reincarnation, a source of horror or a slur to cast upon one's enemies. Each chapter can be read as an essay, and while insect sex might, for example, be the apparent subject of one chapter, it is human sexuality, and our obsessions with it that gives that chapter meaning.

When writing on evolution, Raffles focuses on Jean-Henri Fabre, a self-taught entomologist who rejected all systems, including Darwinism, and was himself largely rejected by the scientific establishment of his time (19th century France). Like other chapters, the focus of this one is not on understanding evolutionary theory, but of putting theory into the larger context of history. Largely unknown in America, Fabre is still widely read and venerated in Japan, and the author explains why this is.

Raffles is not only an essayist, he is a professor of Anthropology at the New School, and the book reflects what I think is his fundamental interest in humanity. Perhaps its churlish of me, but I seek in the natural world something outside of what people are, what they think, what they want and what they do to each other. So a book I found much more to my taste was Insights from Insects by Gilbert Waldbauer, a professional entomologist who is more interested in telling us about insects than about ideas.