Insects covered include cockroaches, fruit flies, house flies, mealworms, silverfish, carpenter ants, centipedes, clothes moths, earwigs, termites, junebugs, grasshoppers, monarch and victory butterflies, praying mantis, gypsy moths, antlions, crickets, fireflies, katydids, yellowjackets, dragonflies, damselflies, mayflies, ear mites, fleas, ticks, bedbugs, black widow spiders, lice, chiggers, mosquitoes, scabies.

The clever author of the acclaimed Ninety-Nine Gnats, Nits, and Nibblers offers a companion volume that runs the gamut from the regrettably familiar, including ticks, cockroaches, and mosquitoes, to bizarre and obscure creatures such as sheep keds, mantispids, and reindeer throat bobs.

Contains over seventy essays in which various authors from throughout history discuss insects.

"Vermin are not only pestering; they shape the way people look at each other and are a way that some people get to feel superior to others"--

A comprehensive examination of American women scientists across the sciences throughout the 20th century, providing a rich historical context for understanding their achievements and the way they changed the practice of science. Much more than a "Who's Who," this exhaustive two-volume encyclopedia examines the significant achievements of 20th century American women across the sciences in light of the historical and cultural factors that affected their education, employment, and research opportunities. With coverage that includes a number of scientists working today, the encyclopedia shows just how much the sciences have evolved as a professional option for women, from the dawn of the 20th century to the present. American Women of Science since 1900 focuses on 500 of the 20th century's most notable American women scientists—many overlooked, undervalued, or simply not well known. In addition, it offers individual features on 50 different scientific disciplines (Women in Astronomy, etc.), as well as essays on balancing career and family, girls and science education, and other sociocultural topics. Readers will encounter some extraordinary scientific minds at work, getting a sense of the obstacles they faced as the scientific community faced the questions of feminism and gender confronting the nation as a whole.

Imagine beetles ejecting defensive sprays as hot as boiling water; female moths holding their mates for ransom; caterpillars disguising themselves as flowers by fastening petals to their bodies; termites emitting a viscous glue to rally fellow soldiers--and you will have entered an insect world once beyond imagining, a world observed and described down to its tiniest astonishing detail by Thomas Eisner. The story of a lifetime of such minute explorations, For Love of Insects celebrates the small creatures that have emerged triumphant on the planet, the beneficiaries of extraordinary evolutionary inventiveness and unparalleled reproductive capacity. To understand the success of insects is to appreciate our own shortcomings, Eisner tells us, but never has a reckoning been such a pleasure. Recounting exploits and discoveries in his lab at Cornell and in the field in Uruguay, Australia, Panama, Europe, and North America, Eisner time and again demonstrates how inquiry into the survival strategies of an insect leads to clarifications beyond the expected; insects are revealed as masters of achievement, forms of life worthy of study and respect from even the most recalcitrant entomophobe. Filled with descriptions of his ingenious experiments and illustrated with photographs unmatched for their combination of scientific content and delicate beauty, Eisner's book makes readers participants in the grand adventure of discovery on a scale infinitesimally small, and infinitely surprising.