Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Bugged
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1985
WEBSITE: https://davidmacneal.com/
CITY: Denver
STATE: CO
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://us.macmillan.com/author/davidmacneal/ * http://www.bookculture.com/blog/2017/05/31/qa-david-macneal
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2017008058
Descriptive conventions:
rda
Personal name heading:
MacNeal, David, 1985-
Birth date: 1985
Fuller form of name
David Lawrence
Found in: Bugged, the insects who rule the world and the people
obsessed with them, 2017: ECIP t.p. (David MacNeal)
intro. (California State University) data view (David
MacNeal is a Los Angeles-born journalist)
LC copyright database, Feb. 14, 2017 (hdg.: MacNeal, David
Lawrence, 1985- ; author, Beast calendar 2010)
CSUN (California State University) alumnus launches comedy
calendar, titled "The Beast Calendar", viewed Feb. 14,
2017 (David MacNeal)
================================================================================
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AUTHORITIES
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20540
Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
PERSONAL
Born 1985, in Los Angeles, CA.
EDUCATION:Graduated from California State University, Northridge.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Science journalist. Boulder County’s Yellow Scene Magazine, CO, editor, until 2014; freelance writer, 2014–.
WRITINGS
Contributor to journals and periodicals, including Vice, Medium, Los Angeles, Onion A.V. Club, Pacific Standard, 5280, ArsTechnica, Outside, and Wired.
SIDELIGHTS
David MacNeal is a Denver-based science journalist who writes on topics where science, technology, and culture overlap. He has contributed articles to a number of journals and periodicals, including Vice, Medium, Los Angeles, Onion A.V. Club, Pacific Standard, 5280, ArsTechnica, Outside, and Wired. Up until 2014, he served as an editor for Boulder County’s Yellow Scene Magazine.
MacNeal published Bugged: The Insects Who Rule the World and the People Obsessed with Them in 2017. The book covers the wide field of entomology. Showcasing the importance of insects to the world, the challenges they face, and many of their interesting quirks throughout the read. MacNeal also highlights the significance of the insect population to the health and survival of humans and survival of the planet as we know it. He interviews numerous entomologists who are passionate about their respective subfields, offering insight into specific segments of the insect world and how that relates to humans. These include stories about a taxidermist who explains a range of gutting techniques, the study of ant nest structures, and the ways the maggots can help forensics teams with murder cases. MacNeal also looks into some of the oddities in the relations between humans and insects, such as cockroach cyborg-conversion kits and bug-eating clubs in Asia.
MacNeal talked about how he came to write Bugged in an interview in the Book Culture blog. He recalled that an article he wrote “about bug sushi got the wheels spinning. So, after months of research, I wrote a book proposal, my agent sent it off, and it got picked up by St. Martin’s Press. The best part was having my friend Michael Kennedy do the illustrations. He also shares my sentiment for the weird.”
In an interview in National Geographic, MacNeal talked about the importance of the insect population to the ecology of Earth. “Bug extinction is one of the most extensive extinctions on the planet. It’s scary because you don’t notice it until it’s too late. Migration patterns are shifting due to climate,” noting that insects offer an interesting approach to studying this phenomenon. “A collector went to the Antioch Dunes … and caught a range of bugs. When scientists returned decades later, they found many species were gone, and the host plants with them. These creatures rely on plants and certain weather patterns and temperatures, an adaptive power they’ve gained over the past 400 million years.” MacNeal continued: “Twenty years ago you could have seen one billion monarch butterflies migrate to Mexico. The latest count is 56.5 million. To combat the decline, the Obama Administration, working with Fish & Wildlife, enacted this migration highway running from Texas to Minnesota. They planted milkweed along the way, which is the host plant for monarch butterflies, hoping to quadruple that 56.5 million by 2020. I am an optimistic cynic, so I feel that insects will outlive us, if we haven’t totally screwed the planet.”
Booklist contributor Colleen Mondor observed that MacNeal “imparts a great deal of solid science, making this an enjoyable and important immersion.” Mondor claimed that the book is “terrifically appealing and informative.” A contributor to Publishers Weekly said that “MacNeal delivers a joy-filled dose of science, reminding readers that” insects “are not to be feared, but celebrated.” The same reviewer took note of MacNeal’s obvious “excitement” in the writing of this text. In a review in Library Journal, Elissa Cooper insisted that those “willing to consider creepy crawlies in a different light will glean much from this thoroughly enjoyable text.” Reviewing the book in Science, Nicole F. Quinn commented that “entomology is a vast field of study populated with many passionate and unique people, and MacNeal takes full advantage of this. His interviews are where this book really shines, showcasing the passion typical of entomologists for insects and the living world at large.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, June 1, 2017, Colleen Mondor, review of Bugged: The Insects Who Rule the World and the People Obsessed with Them, p. 28.
Library Journal, June 1, 2017, Elissa Cooper, review of Bugged, p. 125.
National Geographic, August 6, 2017, “Without Bugs, We Might All Be Dead.”
Publishers Weekly, May 15, 2017, review of Bugged, p. 49.
ONLINE
Bookculture, http://www.bookculture.com/ (May 31, 2017), “Q&A with David MacNeal.”
Colorado Public Radio Website, http://www.cpr.org/ (October 4, 2017), Ryan Warner, “It’s a Bug’s Life.”
David MacNeal Website, https://davidmacneal.com (February 7, 2018).
Science, http://blogs.sciencemag.org/ (June 6, 2017), Nicole F. Quinn, review of Bugged.
It's A Bug's Life: Super Strength, Solving Crimes... And Mighty Good Eatin' Too
Anthony Cotton By Anthony Cotton Oct 4, 2017
Audio: David MacNeal speaks with Ryan Warner
In the pursuit of all things "Bugged," David MacNeal allowed bed bugs to feast on his arm.
(Courtesy David MacNeal)
For every person on earth, there are roughly 1.4 billion insects — a total of some 10 quintillion bugs.
Denver science writer David MacNeal argues they rule the world. For his new book “Bugged,” he fed his blood to bed bugs, helped tarantulas get it on, and ate a gourmet meal that included caterpillar and “ant-ohol.” Yeah, that’s alcohol made from ants.
Despite their sizable numeric dominance, insects, bugs and the like, MacNeal says, have a lot in common with their two-legged counterparts.
“If you look at ants, they're some of the most bizarre, strange creatures...and so are humans,” MacNeal told an invited audience at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder. “They have this whole colony; they have workers, they have soldiers, you have this whole thing of working together. We could learn a lot from just studying them. It's pretty remarkable what observing ants — looking down at the sidewalk — can do.”
Warning: This video includes graphic language.
As it turns out, bugs have long played an important role in human society: recycling waste, pollinating crops, helping wounds heal faster -- even solving murders.
Ten Fun Facts From "Bugged"
Bombardier beetles shoot a jet of boiling chemicals at predators.
In 1947, the U-S shot the first animals into space -- they were fruit flies.
Dung beetles base their navigation on The Milky Way.
By setting up a camera running at 3500 frames per second, scientists discovered that when fleas jump they can hit 400 g’s… twenty times the acceleration of a moon rocket re-entering the earth’s atmosphere.
The United States Government used to have a Bureau of Entomology.
An ant’s nest excavated in 1960 spanned nearly two football fields.
Dung beetles can carry more than a thousand times their body weight.
Bombardier beetles shoot a jet of boiling chemicals at predators.
Some assassin bugs wear the bodies of their kill to blend in among their next victims.
Dr. Seuss, before he wrote “Green Eggs And Ham,” created cartoons for an insecticide that oddly resembled the Grinch Who Stole Christmas.
People once thought that yellow fever was not spread by mosquitos, but via “air electricity” from telegraph transmissions.
Without Bugs, We Might All Be Dead
There are 1.4 billion insects per person on this planet and we need (almost) every one of them.
View Images
Honeybees are crucial for growing crops like almonds and watermelons.
Photograph by Anand Varma, National Geographic Creative
PUBLISHED August 6, 2017
There are 1.4 billion insects for each one of us. Though you often need a microscope to see them, insects are “the lever pullers of the world,” says David MacNeal, author of Bugged. They do everything from feeding us to cleaning up waste to generating $57 billion for the U.S. economy alone.
Today, many species are faced with extinction. When National Geographic caught up with MacNeal in Los Angeles, he explained why this would be catastrophic for life on Earth and why a genetically engineered bee could save hives—and our food supply—worldwide.
View Images
Courtesy St Martin's Press
I think, like me, most people regard bugs as, well, bugs—annoying little critters that sting us or spoil our picnics. Why are you so enchanted by them?
Individually, insects are not incredibly interesting, unless you get down on the ground or view them under a microscope to look at their complexity. But they are the invisible force working throughout the world to keep it running.
Almonds in California or watermelons in Florida wouldn’t be available if it were not for bees. Insects also return nutrients to the earth. If they weren’t around, the amount of decay and rot all over the place would be terrible.
We don’t notice these services because insects are so small and we often see them as this nuisance. But they are the lever pullers of the world.
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You suggest bugs actually do billions of dollars of work. Unpack that for us.
Mace Vaughan and John Losey, two entomologists, did in-depth research on how much insects contribute economically to the U.S. What they found was, it’s about $57 billion, not including pollination. Most of this comes from wildlife, which insects keep going along because they are the base of the food chain for fish, birds, or mammals. Pest controlling insects add a further half billion. And there is no way to account for how much it costs to recycle a dead body or decompose plant life.
You say that 2,086 species of insect are eaten by 3,071 different ethnic groups in about 130 countries. Give us some highlights from that global menu—and your own experience in Japan.
[Laughs] If you go to Mexico, they are selling chapulines—grasshoppers—in brown paper bags filled with spices. In Borneo, they eat rice bugs blended with chilies and salts, cooked in hollow bamboo stems. Caterpillars are very popular in Africa and are a great source of zinc, calcium, iron, and potassium. On Sardinia and Corsica, they eat “crying cheese”— Casu Marzu—that literally has maggots inside it.
In Japan, we went to three restaurants in Tokyo and Shinjuku. At the first, they had these bamboo caterpillars that you could tell had obviously been dead for a while. They got caught in the back of my throat. [Laughs] I needed a swig of beer to get them down.
The next place we went to had a smorgasbord of various insect species. One was this locust that ate rice leaves. It was cooked with soy, with a nice glaze, and because it ate rice leaves, when you ate the insect, you got this crunch, followed by this bright herbal taste that was unique. I’ve never experienced an ingredient like that.
Wasp larvae tasted like the white raisins you get in couscous. They were sweet, had a little pop as you ate them. When chefs regard insects as an ingredient filled with potential, you end up getting fantastic things.
Should We Eat More Bugs?
More than a quarter of the world's population eats insects, and the rest of us have plenty of reasons to join in.
If humans went extinct tomorrow nothing too much would happen to the planet, but insect extinction could be cataclysmic. Explain why.
Bug extinction is one of the most extensive extinctions on the planet. It’s scary because you don’t notice it until it’s too late. Migration patterns are shifting due to climate, and insects offer a great way of looking at that. A collector went to the Antioch Dunes in California, in the 1960s, and caught a range of bugs. When scientists returned decades later, they found many species were gone, and the host plants with them. These creatures rely on plants and certain weather patterns and temperatures, an adaptive power they’ve gained over the past 400 million years.
Twenty years ago you could have seen one billion monarch butterflies migrate to Mexico. The latest count is 56.5 million. To combat the decline, the Obama Administration, working with Fish & Wildlife, enacted this migration highway running from Texas to Minnesota. They planted milkweed along the way, which is the host plant for monarch butterflies, hoping to quadruple that 56.5 million by 2020. I am an optimistic cynic, so I feel that insects will outlive us, if we haven’t totally screwed the planet.
In bygone days, leeches were used in medicine. Tell us about how insects are being used to cure us today.
In human clinical trials in the U.S. and Australia they are looking at “tumor paint,” a venom derived from deathstalker scorpions, which attaches to tumors, like a magnet. Biologists have paired it with fluorescents so now, during brain surgery, instead of relying on an MRI chart, you can actually see the tumors fluoresce in someone’s brain. Brain surgeons can see exactly where they need to cut so they are not cutting away healthy tissue. In some cases, other parts of the brain light up, where you might have missed a tumor. It’s revolutionizing brain surgery.
Cockroaches are helping scientists resolve antibiotic resistance. They love shit! They live in some of the filthiest areas although they themselves are very clean, and so they have developed a resistance to many infections. Instead of looking at plants and fungi for new cures, scientists are finally starting to look at insects.
View Images
Grasshoppers are eaten around the world. They were served fried at this Brooklyn insect-tasting dinner.
Photograph by Evan Sung, The New York Times, Redux
E.O. Wilson has called leafcutter ants, “Earth's ultimate superorganisms.” Tell us about these amazing creatures—and what social organization in ants can tell us about our own societies.
We used to think that there was this class-based structure with ants. You had the worker, the soldier and, sitting above it all, the queen. However, entomologists today are finding that a lot of it is self-governance and that ants are communicating to each other at great speeds. You’ll have ants passing each other along a trail, making antennal taps, like Morse code: Hey, we gotta go this way, or go here for foraging.
Deborah Gordon is doing this fantastic research into a species of ants that crawls along the leaves of the trees where they reside. She found that if a leaf suddenly broke, the ants team together and rapidly repair it, using a sort of algorithm pattern, where they’re communicating at rapid speed. From that we might be able to study ways of repairing systems or mapping brains, and finding connectivity. Along with honeybees, ants are some of the most intelligent beings on the planet, along with dolphins and humans.
Bees have been making honey for us since Egyptian times. But currently there is a global crisis known as colony collapse disorder (CCD). What are its causes? And tell us about exciting work being done in the U.K. on “hygienic bees.”
CCD was this big alarm that went off in the mid-2000s. Entomologists have known there has been an issue with bees since varroa mites spread across the world in the 1980s-90s. But it is still a mystery as far as the cause is concerned. A lot of scientists now figure that the cause has probably been underneath their noses the whole time: varroa mites and stress factors from trucking hives across huge distances for pollination, which happens here in the U.S. but less in the U.K. and Europe. One scientist likens the varroa mites to having a rat attached to your body, leaching life from you.
Incredible work is being done on hygienic bees at the University of Sussex, in England. Naturally, evolution would favor varroa-resistant bees. So at the lab in Sussex, they are breeding that particular trait, using queens that are varroa-resistant. Beekeepers in the States and across the world are seeking out these varroa-resistant, or hygienic, bees.
View Images
Monarch butterfly populations are declining and scientists can't pinpoint why.
Photograph by Joel Sartore, National Geographic Photo Ark
You end your journey on the Greek island of Ikaria. What took you there? And how did writing this book change your life?
That’s a good question! I’m just a stupid, curious individual. [Laughs] When I see something that interests me, I pursue it to its end. So, when I heard about this specific type of honey, to which local villagers attribute their longevity—on Ikaria it is common for people to live into their late 90s and 100s—I was fascinated. There is this honey called reiki, which is as thick as peanut butter and full of vitamins and nutrition. Of course, there are other factors that explain the islanders’ longevity, like sociability. At the annual summer solstice celebration, they gather in their villages, play music and drink wine, then dance in a circle, with their arms linked. There’s just love everywhere!
This journey’s been something else! I went from being this jackass who, as a teenager, emptied almost a can of Raid on a spider, to discovering we are surrounded by these small, incredible things. Now I go around with my neck craned towards the ground. [Laughs] I have learned to stop and observe and appreciate. We’re only here for a short amount of time. So it’s comforting to know that there is something that will outlive us for millions of years.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
About
Denver-based journalist exploring the fringes of science and culture. I recently wrote a non-fiction book for St. Martin’s Press called Bugged: The Insects Who Rule the World and the People Obsessed with Them.
I’ve frequently contributed to WIRED for years, and have also written for Vice, Medium, Los Angeles Magazine, Onion A.V. Club, Pacific Standard, 5280, ArsTechnica and Outside to name a few. I was also an editor for Boulder County’s Yellow Scene Magazine until 2014 when I pursued freelance writing.
My WIRED stories cover a gamut of intrigue—from 3-D printed body parts, cloud speakers, bug sushi, and Darwin’s facial expressions to my feature story on the banana-clad madness of Decentralized Dance Parties.
David MacNeal is a Los Angeles-born journalist orbiting the fringes of science, technology and culture. As the black sheep in a family tree of engineers, the gravitation towards geekery came naturally. This has led him to shatter a tooth on a makeshift motorized bicycle, race down the Santa Monica Mountains in illegal soapbox derbies, and twerk in the streets with banana-clad ravers of the Decentralized Dance Party movement. His articles have since appeared in WIRED, Outside, ArsTechnica, 5280, Medium, and other publications. Aside from obsessing over comic books, he bakes exquisite pies (especially blueberry) and drinks an array of whiskey. Sometimes the glass contains bugs. He currently lives in Denver. Bugged: The Insects Who Rule the World and the People Obsessed with Them is his first book.
Q&A with David MacNeal
We're very excited to be hosting an event with David MacNeal on July 20th to promote his new book, Bugged: The Insects Who Rule the World and the People Obsessed with Them. He was kind enough to answer a few questions for us in anticipation.
1) How did you come to write Bugged?
I was really fortunate. I’d written a feature story for WIRED and about a month or so later this literary agent reached out and asked if I have any book ideas. I got SUPER excited, said “yes,” gave him the gist, and he said … no.
But my second book idea was about my fascination with insects. This small piece I did about bug sushi got the wheels spinning. So, after months of research, I wrote a book proposal, my agent sent it off, and it got picked up by St. Martin’s Press. The best part was having my friend Michael Kennedy do the illustrations. He also shares my sentiment for the weird, so it was great having him collaborate.
2) What are you currently reading?
Always balancing a book and graphic novel or comic. Right now, I’m halfway through Asimov’s The Gods Themselves, and Image’s The Autumnlands by Kurt Busiek (writer) and Benjamin Dewey (illustrator). They are both excellent.
3) Do you have a personal favorite book of all time? If so, can you share it and tell us why?
Damn. Well, not really. But I can tell you about one that really changed my view on stuff. This’ll sound pompous as shit, but I was on a train in Europe riding between countries, and I’d just finished East of Eden. I’m not spoiling it (I hope) when I say the book managed to destroy me with one word. One word! Exceptional story design. Needless to say, I teared up immensely and had to run to the bathroom to sob. I had never been undone in such a way. Even now I get goosebumps just thinking about it.
4) Is there anything you are particularly looking forward to the publication of?
This is a first for me, so it’s hard to say. However, I hope that people will view insects differently. View them for the incredible, ecological glue that they are, and perhaps even start a garden (however small or vertical) of diverse plants to help them flourish. The book is a collection of strange and brilliant people, and my hope is that it will inspire others—even if that’s just a handful of people—and alter their perception of this funny world.
5) What’s next? Any upcoming book projects in the works that you can tell us about?
Ooooh boy, welp, a lot of projects in the works ranging from video games to comics. But I will say that I’ve finished a proposal for a second nonfiction book, and we’ll be discussing what happens with it soon. I won’t say much about it now except that it doesn’t involve bugs, and that it’ll cover another interesting, little-explored part of our world, delving, like Bugged, into history, science, and a subculture of intriguing people.
Thanks, David!
DAVID MACNEAL is a journalist orbiting the fringes of science, technology and culture. His articles have appeared in Wired, Outside, 5280, and other publications. Aside from geeking out over comic books, he bakes exquisite pies (especially blueberry) and drinks an array of whiskey. Sometimes the glass contains bugs. He currently lives in Denver.
Bugged: The Insects Who Rule the World and the People Obsessed with Them
Colleen Mondor
113.19-20 (June 2017): p28.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Bugged: The Insects Who Rule the World and the People Obsessed with Them. By David MacNeal. July 2017. 320p. St. Martin's, $25.99 (9781250095503). 595.7.
MacNeal brings boundless enthusiasm to this survey of the insect world, carrying readers along as he learns about ants, mosquitos, bed bugs, and more. The hook is the author's everyman voice. MacNeal doesn't know much beyond the basics of insect lore, so he is happy to ask all the questions of the experts that anyone would want to ask. The delightful surprise is that as he interviews the scientists on the job, the author gets down and dirty alongside them, detailing his own occasionally revolting experiences with creatures most readers would likely avoid at all costs (cockroaches!). There is a fair amount of history throughout the text, such as Walter Reed's research into curing mosquito-borne yellow fever, along with plenty of humorous situations. MacNeal is acutely aware that he is writing about something that most readers do not think enough about and is determined to keep their attention with whatever means necessary: crickets are cooked and eaten. In the midst of all the laughs, though, he imparts a great deal of solid science, making this an enjoyable and important immersion. --Colleen Mondor
YA: Terrifically appealing and informative popular science for teens, especially those entertained by the "ick" factor. CM.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Mondor, Colleen. "Bugged: The Insects Who Rule the World and the People Obsessed with Them." Booklist, June 2017, p. 28. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A498582604/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=81eacece. Accessed 28 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A498582604
Bugged: The Insects Who Rule the World and the People Obsessed with Them
264.20 (May 15, 2017): p49.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Bugged: The Insects Who Rule the World and the People Obsessed with Them
David MacNeal. St. Martin's, $25.99 (320p)
ISBN 978-1-250-09550-3
Science journalist MacNeal summons his geeky inner 10-year-old as he shares his unapologetic excitement about all things entomological, demonstrating the coolness of bugs as well as their cultural and utilitarian value to humankind. MacNeal also conducts a parade of fellow insect obsessives (some of whom admit to being "just a little bit odd to begin with"), who giddily discuss their favorite topics with openness and wonder. The insect obsessives include a taxidermist at a Manhattan lab who shares gutting techniques that are used on thousands of specimens, a researcher who studies ant-nest structure by filling the nests with orthodontist's plaster, and a forensic medical entomologist who gleans valuable information from the ways that maggots take over a dead body. MacNeal oozes enthusiasm in his hands-on explorations, whether he's touring Japan's Gunma Insect World, feeding bedbugs with his arm, buying a cockroach cyborg-conversion kit and keeping his failed result as a pet, or meeting the head of the Tokyo Bug-Eating Club for a tasting (and then following that up by trying to cook recipes from The Eat-a-Bug Cookbook for his relatives). MacNeal delivers a joy-filled dose of science, reminding readers that the strange and alien creatures in our midst are not to be feared, but celebrated. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Bugged: The Insects Who Rule the World and the People Obsessed with Them." Publishers Weekly, 15 May 2017, p. 49. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A492435660/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d4ac76c5. Accessed 28 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A492435660
Science & technology
142.10 (June 1, 2017): p125+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
SCIENCES
MacNeal, David. Bugged: The Insects Who Rule the World and the People Obsessed with Them. St. Martin's. Jul. 2017. 320p. illus. bibliog. index. ISBN 9781250095503. $25.99; ebk. ISBN 9781250095510. NATHIST
Freelance journalist MacNeal sets out to examine our relationship with insects and in the process discovers just why they are so important to us, exploring their many purposes (waste management, medicinal properties). Noteworthy are the sections on the future of insects (bugs' struggle to reproduce, ill-used pest control, and insects as nutrition). The chapters are well organized, drawing on books, articles, and interviews with amateur and professional entomologists. MacNeal has a humorous, conversational tone and incorporates delightfully irreverent anecdotes in footnotes. At times his descriptions are too effective: the chapter "First Responders," which looks at bugs that feed on decomposing bodies, is particularly nauseating. The author apologizes for his use of the not entirely accurate term bug and makes it clear that he isn't a trained expert. However, his inexperience works to his advantage as readers learn, and perhaps squirm, alongside MacNeal throughout his journey toward understanding these often underappreciated creatures. VERDICT Readers willing to consider creepy crawlies in a different light will glean much from this thoroughly enjoyable text.--Elissa Cooper, Helen Plum Memorial Lib., Lombard, IL
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Science & technology." Library Journal, 1 June 2017, p. 125+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A494891743/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=165b30ca. Accessed 28 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A494891743
Books, Et Al.
Book and media reviews from the journal Science, edited by Valerie Thompson.
Valerie Thompson
Valerie Thompson, Editor
Book Entomology
Bugged
By Nicole F. Quinn
June 6, 2017
Bugged: The Insects Who Rule the World and the People Obsessed with Them
David MacNeal
St. Martin’s Press
2017
320 pp.
Purchase this item now
A journalist by trade, David MacNeal awakened his “inner entophile” after pinning a large lubber grasshopper for the first time. In Bugged, he sets off on a journey to understand insects and the people who study them.
Bugged provides summaries of a range of fields, including integrated pest management, forensic entomology, and entomophagy (the practice of eating insects) while highlighting their important role in varied aspects of human society. Topics include the many parts played by these versatile creatures, from pet and pest to producer of honey to potential food source and vector of disease. Complex phenomena like the practice of releasing sterile mosquitoes into the wild to control diseases and honey bee colony collapse disorder are also well explained.
Each chapter introduces the reader to a given field of entomological study, describing its beginnings and explaining where it is today. Interspersed throughout are interviews with relevant experts, including scientists, pest control operators, curators, chefs, and a diverse array of others.
In a chapter entitled “First Responders,” for example, MacNeal explores the importance of less charismatic insects in cleaning up the environment and solving crimes. Here, he interviews ecologists in Ithaca, New York, who explain the concept of ecosystem services, describing how pest-controlling insects save as much as $4.5 billion each year in the United States alone. He also excitedly tags along on visits to labs and a body farm with forensic entomologists in San Marcos, Texas.
MacNeal does not shy away from the details of insect life, never passing up an opportunity to elicit “gross-out” reactions. While preparing an insect for pinning, for example, he gleefully describes removing the viscera and arranging the specimen in detail.
MATT CARDY/STRINGER/GETTY IMAGES
A curator at the Bristol Zoo holds a Lord Howe Island stick insect, one of the rarest insects in the world.
His childlike enthusiasm for insects is contagious. He frenetically lists facts (e.g., a yellow fever epidemic—precipitated by favorable breeding conditions for the Aedes aegypti mosquito—temporarily disbanded George Washington’s administration in 1793) and embraces irreverence (naming a cyborg cockroach Bill “F—ing” Murray, for example), making for an entertaining, if not occasionally scatterbrained, read. I noted several decidedly unscientific recommendations (he extols the virtues of natural pest control remedies after conducting a quick-and-dirty home experiment with tinctures that include everything from ground deer antlers to olive oil, for example), but overall the book would be an informative starting point for a reader unfamiliar with, but curious about, insects.
Entomology is a vast field of study populated with many passionate and unique people, and MacNeal takes full advantage of this. His interviews are where this book really shines, showcasing the passion typical of entomologists for insects and the living world at large. It’s as much a book about the oddities of the insect world as it is about the idiosyncrasies of the people in it, neither of which turn out to be as alien as they first appear.
About the author
Department of Entomology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA