Insect Stories

A scientist and his young companion Mary wander into fields and forests, flashlight in hand, to witness the secret wars and societies of the insect world. Vernon Kellogg, one of America's pioneering entomologists, abandons dry classification for something far more precious: the thrill of watching a tarantula emerge from its burrow at dusk, ant lions lie in wait in their sandy pits, and wasp queens build their Paper Palaces. These thirteen essays read like field notes from a world we're all too busy to notice, rendered with the careful attention of a man who believed understanding tiny lives makes us more human. Whether you're eight or eighty, Kellogg invites you to crouch down, stay very still, and look closer. The insects, it turns out, have been telling stories all along. This is natural history that reads like adventure, science that feels like wonder.