Imagine beetles ejecting defensive sprays as hot as boiling water; female moths holding their mates for ransom; caterpillars disguising themselves as flowers by fastening petals to their bodies; termites emitting a viscous glue to rally fellow soldiers - and you will have entered an insect world once beyond imagining, a world observed and described down to its tiniest astonishing detail by Thomas Eisner. The story of a lifetime of such minute explorations, "For Love of Insects" celebrates the small creatures that have ...
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Imagine beetles ejecting defensive sprays as hot as boiling water; female moths holding their mates for ransom; caterpillars disguising themselves as flowers by fastening petals to their bodies; termites emitting a viscous glue to rally fellow soldiers - and you will have entered an insect world once beyond imagining, a world observed and described down to its tiniest astonishing detail by Thomas Eisner. The story of a lifetime of such minute explorations, "For Love of Insects" celebrates the small creatures that have emerged triumphant on the planet, the beneficiaries of extraordinary evolutionary inventiveness and unparalleled reproductive capacity. To understand the success of insects is to appreciate our own shortcomings, Eisner tells us, but never has a reckoning been such a pleasure. Recounting exploits and discoveries in his laboratory at Cornell and in the field in Uruguay, Australia, Panama, Europe and North America, Eisner time and again demonstrates how inquiry into the survival strategies of an insect leads to clarifications beyond the expected; insects are revealed as masters of achievement, forms of life worthy of study and respect from even the most recalcitrant entomophobe. Filled with descriptions of his ingenious experiments and illustrated with photographs, this book makes readers participants in the grand adventure of discovery on a scale infinitesimally small and infinitely surprising.
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Seller's Description:
Good in good dust jacket. Ex-library. Good solid ex-library book with the usual stamps, numbers & plastic over the cover. Plastic shows some scuffing wear. Pages are free of writing & tight with some corner, edge, offsetting & smudge wear. The title page and page before look like they were stuck at the binding and someone separated them. Outside edge of pages has some dirt wear.
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Seller's Description:
Very good in good dust jacket. Very good book with a good+ DJ. DJ shows corner, edge & scuffing wear and is rough around the top edge. Book cover shows some corner & edge wear, the ends of the spine are bumped and it is slightly cocked. Pages are free of writing & tight with some ruffling wear.
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Seller's Description:
Fine in Very Good jacket. Book. 4to-over 9¾"-12" tall. Very large, very heavy book, quality green cloth, very bright gilt lettering on spine, darker yellow color inside covers and adjacent end papers, 448 glossy pages, profusely illustrated throughout, most in color. Introduction by ant authority Edward O. Wilson. DJ glossy with color photo close-up of fly's head on front, black spine and back, praise on back from Oliver Sacks, Diane Ackerman, Paul Ehrlich and others. DJ has tiny scratch at spine top right edge, two tiny tears at spine bottom right edge. Very Good DJ/Very Fine book.
