Broadsides from the Other Orders: A Book of Bugs

by Sue Hubbell

Book Overview

It's a big love poem to creepy-crawlies. Over 13 endearing, graceful, and witty essays, Hubbel delves into different orders of insects.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679400621
• ISBN13: 9780679400622
• Release Date: June 1993
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 276 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.6" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Great essays

This is a neat book. Hubell takes a look at a number of insects that we're all familiar with (butterflies, ladybugs, daddy longlegs, black flies, silverfish, katydids, dragonflies, crickets, and more) and has a short essay on each, taking us past just the basics that field guides provide to understand and appreciate more about the lives and behaviors of these animal. There are also neat little fun facts like history of the names, european stories of the insects, etc. Her writing style is easy to read yet there is a balance between technical/biological facts and fun easy anecdotes/stories. Its all woven together so its not like you're reading a text book but you're stil learning a lot. There are lovely drawings sprinkled in throughout the book. Overall I really enjoyed the book and have gained some neat new knowledge that otherwise I would not have encountered.Here's a quick tidbit: for the eastern katydid - the latin name translates as "That being which has wings like a camellia leaf." Neat - makes me look a little differently at the katydid too. I loved this book - highly recommeded for any nature lover.

excellent popular book on insects and other arthropods

Hubbell is clearly pasionate about insects and their relatives, and that passion shows in this outstanding book on invertebrates. Combining personal experience with solid entomological fact, Hubbell presents to the average reader fascinating glimpses of a number of invertebrate groups, such as water striders, dragonflies, daddy longlegs, and butterflies. Hubbell shows the life stories of these groups, the role they play in nature, and the people whose lives they affect. Whether beautiful or hideous, valuable or a pest, Hubbell shows them all to be fascinating creatures. Despite that many of them are quite common, some such as black flies too common, the authors show that mysteries still exist with these creatures, how sometimes relatively basic aspects of their lives and roles in nature are mysteries. This book is very readable and while not too technical is filled with lots of interesting and accurate facts and a wealth of personal experience on the part of the author. If you ever wanted to know more about the butterflies in your garden, the dragonflies wizzing by you over the local lake or pond, or that daddy longlegs in the attic or toolshed, this is the book for you.

A Great Appreciation for Life in its Many Forms

As a young boy I was an avid collector of insects. No specialty - six legs were the only requirement. By about age ten I had exhausted the children's section of the central library and was given the rare honor to check out books from the adult section. Thick books with small print and detailed drawings of insects in their varied life stages. After recently reading Sue Hubbell's book, I wondered why I had wandered away from my early passion.She describes chapter by chapter the fascinating life that we call bugs. Hubbell begins with Order Lepidoptera, the butterflies, among the more acceptable insects. Other chapters explore midges and gnats, ladybugs, daddy longlegs, black flies, bravo (killer) bees, water striders, silverfish, dragonflies and damselflies, gypsy moths, syrphid flies, and camel crickets. The detailed ink drawings scattered throughout the text are quite good.Reading Broadsides is great fun. Hubbell is intelligent and has a great appreciation for life in its many forms. She introduces us to entomologists (a fascinating life form in themselves) and we share their enthusiasm for their particular study. We take part in a butterfly census in the Rockies, search for ladybug aggregations in the Sierra foothills, track katydids in the Midwest with sophisticated audio electronics, and closely observe an aging daddy longlegs. We discover how University of Kansas acquired a remarkable collection of water striders from a private collector. We learn that classifying insects is not a simple matter; insect evolution has been amazingly complicated, leading to unending debate regarding proper taxonomy. Obviously biodiversity is out of control. More importantly, Hubbell helps us see the world through the eyes (sometimes many eyes) of individual insect species. I was fascinated by the complex and exhausting mating dance of silverfish. She may have even created a new genre: insect eroticism. (I look at silverfish differently today - but I still chase them away from my books.) Somehow Hubbell even manages to present biting black flies with some sympathy and understanding. Her personal observations - as when stooping over small puddles in early spring to admire the graceful performance of water striders - reveal a world that so often we ignore in our hurry and concern with bigger things.This is a relaxing book to read. Each chapter largely stands alone and could be read in any sequence, but nonetheless the chapters combine to tell a fascinating story. I highly recommend Broadsides.

A Marvelous Book

Hubbel is fascinated by bugs of all sorts (she keeps bees) and is a very skilled and talented writer besides. This book gave me hours of sheer enjoyment, and incidentally educated me a bit, too.

Its value is what it tells us about our relation to nature.

Perhaps the best way to understand the human condition is to examine what we think of as most alien--at least that is the beautyof Sue Hubbell's Broadsides from the Other Orders: A Book of Bugs. Throughout her close examination of the world which surrounds us--and which we too often would rather not see--Hubbell gives us a glimpse of how we see. Her introduction punctures a hole in our unexamined faith that numbers mean knowledge: to say something is about the size of a bread basket may not be as precise as giving its measurements, but it communicates more useful knowlede than, say, 8"X8"X16". All the same she doesn't hesitate to tell us that there are 300 pound of bugs for every pound of human. Each chapter adds to that questioning of technological ways of knowing and relating to the natural world. The best chapter, in my mind, is the one on Gypsy Moths. She give us a fascinating history of the arrival of the moths in the U.S. and their place in the American dream of getting rich quick. Because they were classified, in the 18th century, in the same family as the silk worm, many thought they would be able to produce a heartier and more abundant silk thread, but the category was a human invention, and the gypsy moth caterpillarss could not produce any marketable silk. But when they escaped from the controlled environment, they wrought havoc on trees. Hubbell examines the national debate about exterminating the moth altogether or limiting its destruction. Human attempts to control the moths failed, but the eco-system had its own checks to the spread of the moths (trees secreted poisons, and diseases limited population growth). When the moths became a problem again in the late twentieth century, the debate took the same shape as it had 200 years earlier. In the end, as Hubbell explains from the cafe looking out on the neighborhood where the moths first made their appearance, and where a new mall with its vast parking lot cleared of trees, it turned out that a man and his bulldozer was a far greater danger to the trees than any number of gypsy moths. Take a look at Broadsides from the Other Orders--you will never look at a moth or a daddy long leg the same way again.