Michal Žurovec, Jana Nebesářová, Aleš Bezdĕk, Ivo Šauman, Barbora Konopová, Marija Milosavljević, and Daniela Procházková
This book is one-of-a-kind. It’s primarily a picture book of what I might call the scientific coffee-table ilk. As such the pictures don’t really require words at all. The text, such as it is, is a dual language commentary on the pictures, pairing Czech with (excellent) English.
In the preface, the authors explain the idea behind their book: “What if we could look [insects] in the face? … They have features as unique and varied as any animal on the planet.” And of course, the book offers exactly such a collection of entomological mugshots. I can assure you that you have never seen anything like it. I have already spent hours just looking at it.
It’s hard to say exactly what it is that is achieved by bringing these striking entomological illustrations together in a book, but I know that I like it! “Entomologically inspiring” is hardly a good enough term to use.
There’s a facial portrait for each of 80 different insects, drawn from all of the extant insect orders. For each face, there’s a table of data about the order to which the insect belongs, some general comments on how and where it lives, together with a paragraph of “interesting points” about the ecological significance of insects of this kind. The implication, often only implied, is that the anatomy tells us a lot about the ecology.
But as the authors remark, “the true centrepiece of each entry is the full-page photograph.” Many of the images are false-coloured scanning electron micrographs of startling beauty, although some are excellent naturally coloured, focus-stacked light microscope images.
This is probably a book for institutional use rather than personal bookshelves, but I hope that it finds its way into many public libraries where it will provoke wonder.
