With a format, size, and style of content that is very reminiscent of the original Golden Guides and the Observer’s Books series, the new Princeton University Press Little Books of Nature series is a welcome development indeed.
When Dr. Arthur V. Evans’ remarkable “Beetles of Eastern North America” was published by Princeton University Press in 2014, cheers went up around the entomological world for such an extensive guide becoming available; however there were some – including yours truly – who live “out west” and may have been heard subsequently also to mutter in hushed tones “Eastern North America? Why is it always only eastern?”
I think ladybirds (or as my Nan called them in the her American vernacular – ladybugs) were the very first family of insects I learned to identify as a child. Perhaps bees or ants might have been ever-so-slightly earlier, but ladybirds were close behind them if so. Of course, at that young age I assumed that all ladybirds were alike, having no idea of the variation to be found throughout the world among the Family Coccinellidae – or that there was such a thing as the Coccinellidae, or taxonomic families, or taxonomy for that matter.
J.B.S. Haldane famously said that, judging from His works, God must have an inordinate fondness for beetles, and if The Book of Beetles: A Life-Size Guide to Six Hundred of Nature’s Gems is any indication, so does its author Patrice Bouchard.