Compiled by Lou Bjostad (Colorado State University). If you have favorite books that you would like to add to this list, please send your suggestions to lbjostad@lamar.colostate.edu.
This is an unabashedly idiosyncratic collection of some of the best books about the natural history of insects and about the personal experiences of the entomologists who work on them. These books emphasize the literary and human side of entomology. They are not highly technical, and would be good reading for backyard collectors as well as those with professional interests in entomology.
You can order books from Amazon, Borders, or Barnes & Noble. Many out-of-print books are available through Alibris or Bibliofind or Advanced Book Exchange.
Books are alphabetical by author.
Call numbers are for Morgan Library at Colorado State University.
Insect Potpourri: Adventures in Entomology
Jean Adams, ed. 1992. St. Lucie Press, Delray Beach, FL.
Basic biology of insects and practical efforts to control insect populations.
Quality is variable from chapter to chapter, but still about six good chapters.
Insects Did It First
R. D. Akre, G. S. Paulson, E. P. Catts. 1992.
Ye Galleon Press: Fairfield Washington. ISBN 0-87770-517-8
Sample text is available at http://www.ship.edu/~gspaul/1st.html
A view of insect achievements organized by function, with chapters on
bungee jumping, radar jamming, velcro, and bikinis.
The Life that Lives on Man
M. Andrews. 1976. Taplinger Publishing. ISBN: 0-8004820-9
Extremely well-written account of human parasites, great fun to read.
The Natural History of Mosquitoes
Marston Bates. 1949. New York:Macmillan.
Reprinted by Harper & Row, 1965.
Bugs in the System
May Berenbaum. 1995. New York, Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-62499-0.
A tour-de-force about the impact of insects on human affairs.
Ninety-Nine Gnats, Nits, and Nibblers
May Berenbaum. 1989. Univ. of Illinois-Urbana Press.
A dazzling array of short essays on insects, from the same entomologist who
brought the Insect Fear Film Festival to the entomological community.
QL467 B47
Ninety-Nine More Maggots, Mites, and Munchers
May Berenbaum. 1993. Univ. of Illinois-Urbana Press.
The sequel.
QL467 B474
Silent Spring
Rachel Carson. 1962. Boston, Houghton Mifflin.
Probably influenced the social responsibility of entomologists more than any other book.
SB 951 C3
Insect Life
John Henry Comstock. 1903. New York, D. Appleton and Company.
QL 463 W69
The Various Contrivances by which Orchids are Fertilized by Insects
Charles Darwin. 1895. New York, D. Appleton and Company.
QK926 .D244
To Know a Fly
Vincent G. Dethier. 1962. Holden-Day, San Francisco.
A humorous history of the author's laboratory experiments on the feeding
physiology of the fly, and the ingenuity required to design experiments that
will tell us how an insect decides what to eat.
The World of the Tent-Makers
Vincent G. Dethier. 1980. Univ. Mass. Press, New York. ISBN 0-87023-300-9.
Everything you want to know about the natural history of tent caterpillars,
presented from the perspective of the insect. Excellent literary style.
Crickets and Katydids, Concerts and Solos
Vincent G. Dethier. 1992. Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass. ISBN 0-674-17577-8
The world of insect songsters.
Caring for Insect Livestock: An Insect Rearing Manual
G. A. Dunn. 1993. Young Entomologists' Society, Inc., 1915 Peggy Place, Lansing, MI 48910-2553
For the 59 insects (and related arthropods) most popularly used in displays and classrooms.
Life on a Little-Known Planet
Howard Ensign Evans. 1966. Dell Publishing Co., New York.
The book that probably attracted more of us to the profession of entomology than
any other. Each chapter is about a different kind of insect.
The Pleasures of Entomology
Howard Ensign Evans. 1985. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.
Each chapter is a vignette of a different insect species (lovebug, flea, boll
weevil, Mormon cricket, gypsy moth, killer bees, blister beetles, medfly, bee-
wolf, marsh flies, milkweed bug, tobacco hornworm).
Wasp Farm
Howard Ensign Evans. 1963. Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
Two natural historians buy a farm and study the nesting behavior and life
history of their six-legged livestock.
The Life of the Caterpillar, complete HTML from Eric Eldred
J. Henri Fabre
Pest Control
Bill Fitzhugh. 1997. Avon Books. ISBN: 0380973480
About a guy trying to cross-breed assassin bugs for his all natural pest control company.
Warner Brothers bought it to make a movie.
The Dancing Bees
Karl von Frisch. 1953. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York.
The story of a Nobel prize-winning naturalist who discovered how bees use a
dance language to communicate with nestmates about the location of food
sources.
The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees
Karl von Frisch. 1967, 1993. Harvard U. Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Another readable account of bee dance language.
QL 568 A6F643
The Compleat Cockroach
David George Gordon. 1996. Ten Speed Press. ISBN 0-89815-853-2.
"This book is so comprehensive (and witty) that you
will quickly become a veritable cockroach expert..."
Young Entomologists' Society NewsBulletin, December 1996
Jim Heath.
About the war in Australia between dung beetles and bush flies.
Bumblebee Economics
Bernd Heinrich. 1979. Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press. ISBN 0-674-08581-7.
How bumblebees make it through a typical year, including natural history and
energy budgets.
QL 568 A6B9
In a Patch of Fireweed
Bernd Heinrich. 1984. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard Univ. Press. ISBN 0674445511.
A natural history romp that includes more on the bees, but looks at some other
holometabola, including dung beetles, moths, and wasps.
Journey to the Ants
Bert Holldobler, Edward O. Wilson. 1994. Belknap Press. ISBN 0674485254.
The authors interweave their personal adventures with the social lives of ants.
A Country Year
Sue Hubbell. 1986. New York, Random House.
Formerly a non-biologist, Sue Hubbell moved to an old farm in the Ozarks and
went into business as a professional beekeeper.
QH105 M8 H83
Broadsides from the other Orders
Sue Hubbell. 1993. New York, Random House. ISBN:0-679-40062-1
From honeybees to some of their less industrious cousins.
QL463 H89
Insect Builders and Craftsmen
Ross E. Hutchins. 1959. Chicago, Rand McNally.
QL 496 H89
Grasshopper Dreaming: Reflections on Killing and Loving
Jeffrey A Lockwood. 2002. Skinner House Books.
ISBN 1-55896-431-2
The Life of the Bee
Maurice Maeterlinck. 1914. New York, Dodd-Mead.
A lawyer who turned entomologist and wrote an unexpected bestseller about his
hymenopteran companions.
QL 568 A6M3
The Life of the White Ant
Maurice Maeterlinck. 1927. New York, Dodd-Mead.
More entomology from a lawyer who redeemed himself by taking up loftier pursuits.
QL 595.73 M26L
The Life of the Ant
Maurice Maeterlinck. 1930. Quinn & Boden, Rahway, NJ.
And yet another entomological tome to ward off all those lawyer jokes.
Karen Needham & Launi Lucas. 2001. Tradewind Books, Vancouver, BC Canada. ISBN 1896580114.
Aimed at youngsters, a book about insects that live under water as youngsters themselves, and then transform themselves into terrestrial adults (children will be fascinated by the illustrations).
The Natural History of Flies
Harold Oldroyd. 1964. New York:W.W.Norton.
InsectAsides: Great Poets on Man's Pest Friend.
Martha Paulos. 1995. Viking Studio Books. ($14.95 in Jan. 1995)
Insect rapture from the likes of Emily Dickinson, William Wordsworth, Christopher Morley, and William Blake.
Fleas, Flukes and Cuckoos: A Study of Bird Parasites
Miriam Rothschild and Theresa Clay. 1952. Collins New Naturalist Series
Not entirely about entomology, but very well written and also very funny in places.
Insect Musicians & Cricket Champions
Lisa G. Ryan. 1996. China Books & Periodicals. ISBN 0614968615
The Insect World of J. Henri Fabre
Edwin Way Teale. 1949. Harper & Row, New York.
The story of Fabre, the first person to study insect behavior in depth, with
chapters on caterpillars, hunting wasps, peacock moth, bees, scarab beetles,
praying mantis, red ants, froghoppers, burying beetles, weevils, crickets, and
glow-worms.
Curious Naturalists
Niko Tinbergen. 1958. Doubleday, Garden City, New York.
An excellent personal history from the field notebooks of a Nobel prize-winning
naturalist, with half the chapters on insects (the other half on birds),
including his work on bee-hunters, sand wasps, and butterflies.
Empire of the Ants
Bernard Werber, Margaret Rocques (translator). 1998. Bantam Doubleday Dell. ISBN: 0553096133.
A science fiction novel that starts with the complexities of an ant colony, extrapolated into a wild, weird adventure.
Ants: Their Structure, Development and Behavior
William Morton Wheeler. 1910. New York:, Columbia University Press
Appendices including key to subfamilies, genera, and subgenera of North American Formicidae and a list of described species.
Demons of the Dust
William Morton Wheeler. 1930. New York, W.W. Norton.
A lucid presentation of the natural history of ant lions.
QL 496 W55
Insects and the Life of Man
Vincent B. Wigglesworth. 1976. Halsted Press.
Collected essays on pure science and applied biology.
QL 463 W69 1976
Rats, Lice and History
Hans Zinsser. 1935. New York: Blue Ribbon Books.
"...being a study in biography, which, after twelve preliminary chapters
indispensable for the preparation of the lay reader, deals with the life history
of typhus fever." How can you resist?
RC 199 Z5 1935