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Book Cover for: Journey to the Ants: A Story of Scientific Exploration, Bert Hölldobler

Journey to the Ants: A Story of Scientific Exploration

Bert Hölldobler

Hailed as "a masterpiece" by Scientific American and as "the greatest of all entomology books" by Science, Bert Holldobler and Edward O. Wilson's monumental treatise The Ants also was praised in the popular press and won a Pulitzer Prize. This overwhelming success attests to a fact long known and deeply felt by the authors: the infinite fascination of their tiny subjects. This fascination finds its full expression in Journey to the Ants, an overview of myrmecology that is also an eloquent tale of the authors' pursuit of these astonishing insects. Richly illustrated and delightfully written, Journey to the Ants combines autobiography and scientific lore to convey the excitement and pleasure the study of ants can offer. The authors interweave their personal adventures with the social lives of ants, building, from the first minute observations of childhood, a remarkable account of these abundant insects' evolutionary achievement. Accompanying Holldobler and Wilson, we peer into the colony to see how ants cooperate and make war, how they reproduce and bury their dead, how they use propaganda and surveillance, and how they exhibit a startlingly familiar ambivalence between allegiance and self-aggrandizement. This exotic tour of the entire range of formicid biodiversity - from social parasites to army ants, nomadic hunters, camouflaged huntresses, and energetic builders of temperature-controlled skyscrapers - opens out increasingly into natural history, intimating the relevance of ant life to human existence. A window on the world of ants as well as those who study them, this book will be a rich source of knowledge and pleasure for anyone who has ever stopped to wonder about the miniature yetimmense civilization at our feet.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Belknap Press
  • Publish Date: Jul 21st, 1998
  • Pages: 240
  • Language: English
  • Edition: Revised - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.10in - 7.96in - 0.81in - 1.60lb
  • EAN: 9780674485266
  • Categories: Life Sciences - BiologyAnimals - Insects & SpidersLife Sciences - Zoology - Entomology

About the Author

Hölldobler, Bert: - Bert Hölldobler is the Robert A. Johnson Professor in Social Insect Research at Arizona State University. He was previously Professor of Biology and Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard University and subsequently held the chair for Behavioral Physiology and Sociobiology at the University of Würzburg, Germany. He is an elected member of many academies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the US National Academy of Sciences, and the German National Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina. He has received many awards, among them the Pulitzer Prize for The Ants, coauthored with E. O. Wilson.
Wilson, Edward O.: - Edward O. Wilson was Pellegrino University Professor, Emeritus, at Harvard University. In addition to two Pulitzer Prizes (one of which he shares with Bert Hölldobler), Wilson has won many scientific awards, including the National Medal of Science and the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

More books by Bert Hölldobler

Book Cover for: The Leafcutter Ants: Civilization by Instinct, Bert Hölldobler
Book Cover for: The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies, Bert Hölldobler
Book Cover for: The Guests of Ants: How Myrmecophiles Interact with Their Hosts, Bert Hölldobler
Book Cover for: The Ants, Bert Hölldobler

Praise for this book

Beautifully written and illustrated...These fifteen chapters are a bustling but well-organized ant heap, full of wonders natural and intellectual.--Philip Morrison "Scientific American"
Everyone should read Journey to the Ants; it is a book to read right through; I have done so twice so far. It brings back the joy of science and restores the sense of wonder, it is truly food for thought. For me it is a beloved book that will stay at my bedside.--James E. Lovelock "Times Higher Education Supplement"
Hölldobler and Wilson have carefully distilled more than 80 years of their combined personal research and thorough knowledge of the literature to produce a book that is both packed with ideas and information and a joy to read. The authors subtitled their book 'A Story of Scientific Exploration' and, like all good stories, it has a logical progression and sensible themes and is hard to put down.--C. Ronald Carroll "American Scientist"