| Termites |
| Termites -- Social aspects. |
| Technology and civilization |
| Dictyoptera |
| Isoptera |
| White ants |
| Civilization and machinery |
| Civilization and technology |
| Machinery and civilization |
Available:
Library | Shelf Number | Shelf Location | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Fairhaven-Millicent | 595 MAR 2018 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
The award-winning journalist Lisa Margonelli, national bestselling author of Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank , investigates the environmental and economic impact termites inflict on human societies in this fascinating examination of one of nature's most misunderstood insects.
Are we more like termites than we ever imagined? In Underbug , the award-winning journalist Lisa Margonelli introduces us to the enigmatic creatures that collectively outweigh human beings ten to one and consume $40 billion worth of valuable stuff annually--and yet, in Margonelli's telling, seem weirdly familiar. Over the course of a decade-long obsession with the little bugs, Margonelli pokes around termite mounds and high-tech research facilities, closely watching biologists, roboticists, and geneticists. Her globe-trotting journey veers into uncharted territory, from evolutionary theory to Edwardian science literature to the military industrial complex. What begins as a natural history of the termite becomes a personal exploration of the unnatural future we're building, with darker observations on power, technology, historical trauma, and the limits of human cognition.
Whether in Namibia or Cambridge, Arizona or Australia, Margonelli turns up astounding facts and raises provocative questions. Is a termite an individual or a unit of a superorganism? Can we harness the termite's properties to change the world? If we build termite-like swarming robots, will they inevitably destroy us? Is it possible to think without having a mind? Underbug burrows into these questions and many others--unearthing disquieting answers about the world's most underrated insect and what it means to be human.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Termites, a group of insects closely related to cockroaches and responsible for up to $20 billion in property damage in the United States each year, make for an unlikely but fascinating protagonist in the capable and creative hands of science journalist Margonelli (Oil on the Brain). She uses the termite taxonomy as a way to address questions with "evolutionary, ecological and existential implications." Her far-ranging work touches on the nature of individuality, the use of drones by the military, the applicability of concepts of good and evil to science, and the creation of biofuels created using the termite gut, among other topics. Margonelli brings all of this to light by making complex, cutting-edge science understandable to the general reader, while also conveying the excitement, frustration, and plain drudgery inherent in the scientific endeavor. She provides firsthand descriptions of field and laboratory work throughout the world, from Cambridge, Mass., to Windhoek, Namibia, coupled with interviews of scientists involved in exploring the intricacies and implications of termite behavior. The range of disciplines represented by these researchers (entomology, physiology, genomics, physics, robotics) by itself ably demonstrates the interdisciplinary nature of current research on termites. Margonelli has written a book as entertaining as it is informative. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Science writer Margonelli (Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline, 2007) explores the mysterious realms of an insect that has always gotten a bad rap.The author's obsession with understanding termites began as idle curiosity and morphed into magazine articles and then this book. At times, Margonelli's musings about termites become deeply philosophical. Early in the book, she writes, "where I had thought of landscapes as the product of growth, on that afternoon they inverted to become the opposite.Termites have made the world by unmaking parts of it. They are the architects of negative space. The engineers of not." Becoming fascinated with not just the insects themselves, but the researchers who study them, the author traveled with them to Namibia, Australia, Nevada, and Arizona to observe and collect termites in their environments. Her interest in oil as a crucial fossil fuel led her to wonder, along with research scientists, whether the wood that termites consumed (along with grass) could be converted to gasoline. Throughout the book, Margonelli asserts herself, as she helps the scientists collect termites for laboratory study and enters the usually sealed-off labs to view the dissections firsthand. Occasionally, the author focuses the narrative on the destructiveness of termites when they come into contact with man-made structures. Elsewhere, she demonstrates pure interest in termite behaviors without consequences attached. She wonders why colonizing insects such as bees and ants are portrayed as mostly noble while termites are inevitably considered pests by most people. Climate change might alter the already negative perception of termites by forcing two different invasive types to intermingle, thus ratcheting up the destruction. Humans have been hoping to re-engineer the inherent traits of termites, but climate change is allowing termites to re-engineer themselves. Margonelli does not always clearly convey the technical nature of termite research for general readers, but she succeeds in piquing interest in an unlikely subject. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
WASHINGTON BLACK, by Esi Edugyan. (Knopf, $26.95.) This eloquent novel, Edugyan's third, is a daring work of empathy and imagination, featuring a Barbados slave boy in the 1830s who flees barbaric cruelty in a hot-air balloon and embarks on a life of adventure that is wondrous, melancholy and strange. CAN YOU TOLERATE THIS? By Ashleigh Young. (Riverhead, $26.) The New Zealand poet and essayist writes many sly ars poeticas in her collection - a lovely, profound debut that spins metaphors of its own creation and the segmented identity of the essayist, that self-regarding self. BIG GAME: The NFL in Dangerous Times, by Mark Leibovich. (Penguin Press, $28.) A gossipy, insightful and wickedly entertaining journey through professional football's sausage factory. Reading this sparkling narrative, one gets the sense that the league will survive on the magnetism of the sport it so clumsily represents. THE REAL LOLITA: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World, by Sarah Weinman. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $27.99.) Writing "Lolita," Nabokov drew on the real-life story of a girl held captive for two years by a pedophile. Weinman tracks down her history to complicate our view of the novel widely seen as Nabokov's masterpiece. THE SCHOOLHOUSE GATE: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind, by Justin Driver. (Pantheon, $35.) This meticulous history examines rulings on free speech, integration and corporal punishment to argue that schools are our most significant arenas of constitutional conflict. TICKER: The Quest to Create an Artificial Heart, by Mimi Swartz. (Crown, $27.) The long, arduous effort to invent and then perfect a machine that could stand in for the human heart offers Swartz a scandalous story filled with feuding doctors willing to stretch ethical boundaries to make great achievements. UNDERBUG: An Obsessive Tale of Termites and Technology, by Lisa Margonelli. (Scientific American/ Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) Margonelli, who believes termites are underappreciated, makes her case via the researchers who study them - especially their ability to build the insect equivalent of a skyscraper. HARBOR ME, by Jacqueline Woodson. (Nancy Paulsen/Penguin, $17.99; ages 10 and up.) In this compassionate novel, a perceptive teacher requires six struggling middle school students to spend one class period a week together, just talking. LOUISIANA'S WAY HOME, by Kate DiCamillo. (Candlewick, $16.99; ages 10 and up.) Louisiana Elefante, first introduced as a minor character in DiCamillo's "Raymie Nightingale," hits the road with her grandmother, nurturing practical optimism despite hardship. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Library Journal Review
Science writer Margonelli (Oil on the Brain) again looks beneath the earth's surface, this time making the case for termites as a fascinating social insect worthy of attention and examination in the search for biofuels. Termites do, after all, outweigh the human population by a factor of ten and consume $40 billion worth of material annually. Margonelli travels the world to meet with scientists studying the creatures and their colonies. One mound housing 11 pounds of termites eats as much grass as a 900-pound cow. Through the course of the book, termite mounds (and associated fungi) are compared in turn to brains, superorganisms, political systems, and even planets. The researchers and their thought processes star alongside the insects in this account. VERDICT Popular science fans will enjoy this new perspective on a common insect. Recommended for most collections.-Teresa R. Faust, Coll. of Central Florida, Ocala © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.