Rating: 
Summary: This is "THE" Ant Book. Look no further
Review: As an adult, I bought an ant farm from good old Uncle Milton. I was so excited about my ant farm, I decided to make this into a personal science project, and purchased this book. If there's something you want to know about ants, this is THE book. It made ownership of my ant farm much a greater pleasure. I should also mention that it made great use for the occasional escaping ant. It certainly isn't for kids unless that kid is of high school age, and very interested in becoming a biologist.
Rating:
Summary: This is "THE" Ant Book. Look no further
Review: As an adult, I bought an ant farm from good old Uncle Milton. I was so excited about my ant farm, I decided to make this into a personal science project, and purchased this book. If there's something you want to know about ants, this is THE book. It made ownership of my ant farm much a greater pleasure. I should also mention that it made great use for the occasional escaping ant. It certainly isn't for kids unless that kid is of high school age, and very interested in becoming a biologist.
Rating:
Summary: "The Ants" is THE ant book
Review: by Mark Fitzsimmons
This is a fascinating, indispensible book for anyone interested in ants. It was everything I hoped it would be and more. I have owned this book for three years and still haven't stopped reading it, probably never will. It is jam-packed with interesting and little known aspects of eusocialism in the ants, easily as diverse as its subject.
This is a semi-technical book, and entomological scientific jargon is used ubiquitously, so if you aren't interested in using the glossary frequently just to understand what you're reading, it may not be for you, but for the avid ant-watcher or scientist interested in social evolution, this is it.
With the incredible drawings (including representative pictures from every known ant genera) and informative graphs and charts that shed light on even the most complex and difficult to understand socio-biological patterns, it is beautiful to behold and fun to browse and just pluck little tidbits at random. Even the expanded table of contents is thought-provoking and fun to read.
"The Ants" does more than simply summarize current knowledge about ants. It goes into details of the many different ways in which ants have evolved social structures and critically evaluates theories of ant colony dynamics and eusocial evolution.
Rating:
Summary: "The Ants" is THE ant book
Review: by Mark Fitzsimmons This is a fascinating, indispensible book for anyone interested in ants. It was everything I hoped it would be and more. I have owned this book for three years and still haven't stopped reading it, probably never will. It is jam-packed with interesting and little known aspects of eusocialism in the ants, easily as diverse as its subject. This is a semi-technical book, and entomological scientific jargon is used ubiquitously, so if you aren't interested in using the glossary frequently just to understand what you're reading, it may not be for you, but for the avid ant-watcher or scientist interested in social evolution, this is it.With the incredible drawings (including representative pictures from every known ant genera) and informative graphs and charts that shed light on even the most complex and difficult to understand socio-biological patterns, it is beautiful to behold and fun to browse and just pluck little tidbits at random. Even the expanded table of contents is thought-provoking and fun to read. "The Ants" does more than simply summarize current knowledge about ants. It goes into details of the many different ways in which ants have evolved social structures and critically evaluates theories of ant colony dynamics and eusocial evolution.
Rating:
Summary: Everything you would ever want to know about the Ant
Review: I have always had an interest in insects from an early age. As a child I was always capturing ants and trying to setup ant colonies. So when I saw this book at the store I had to buy it. Just looking at it in the bookstore I was drawn in by the many pages of detailed drawings and photographs. The book can be a bit technical at times. It used advanced (to me anyway) entomological terms that can sometimes make understanding some of the topics difficult. Though it is clearly targeted at an adult audience, I would not hesitate to give this book to a bright child who is particularly interested in ants. Just about anything you might want to know about the ant is covered. The book did a good job of explaining some questions that I had always had of ants. For example, how can the queen continue to lay fertilized eggs endlessly without a "partner". The only topic I might have liked seen described at greater length would have been keeping ants. How to excavate a colony. How to obtain a queen. And son on.
Rating:
Summary: Very interesting and very thorough
Review: I read this book while on vacation. It is a large book but is packed with information on ants from around the world. Everything you could want to know about ants is in this book, and this book is packed with real photographs and clear illustrations and even some paintings of ants engaging in behavior written in the text. This book takes a while to read, but it is worth it. After reading it I could understand why it won a pulitzer prize for nonfiction. This would be an excellent book to read if you are interested in insects.
Rating:
Summary: The definitive ant book
Review: I received a copy of this book back in the early 1990s and have gone back to read it on several occasions. The book is massive consisting of over 730 pages in a large 12 x 10 format. It contains hundreds of illustrations including several color plates and some really amazing paintings of various types of ants and hive culture. The information is exhaustive ranging from the extremely technical to the conversational. Parts of the book will be mainly of interest to the hardcore entomologist but the majority of the book is easily understood by the layman, well maybe not always easily but it's not too difficult and it's worth the effort. I can't imagine a better or more complete text on the subject of ants. Anyone with any real interest in the subject should not be without this book.
Rating:
Summary: My jaw dropped.
Review: I sat in a bookstore for three hours just reading pages from each section. Well laid out, well (duh!) researched. Astounding. It is verging on the edge of crazy to want to buy this tome seeing as how I am not in the field of cultural entomolgy, but I feel that I must own this book, just for the sheer volume of information it contains on those tiny ants. I never contemplated that this much dedication and care would be taken to understand them. Very cool.
Rating:
Summary: a fantastic read
Review: I was given this in 1992 for my birthday and spent a week reading it from cover to cover...and have returned to for pleasure ever since. Admittedly I was already fascinated by ants, but this is quite simply the best book I have ever seen about any group of animals. The authors write authoritatively and very readably about every aspect of ant evolution and behaviour, with humour and a clear passion for their subject; the illustrations are lavish and beautiful. Probably most readers will skip some of the more technical aspects, as this is also a work of reference with (beautifully illustrated) keys to all the major ant genera; but there are entire chapters on life-history, evolution, symbiosis and behaviour which are simply unrivalled in modern literature. From the awesome to the utterly bizarre, the ants are one of the pinnacles of animal evolution. This book is a labour of love, which does justice to the fantastic diversity of these insects, by authors who are the masters of their subject. A pleasure in every respect.
Rating:
Summary: This is the ant: bible, encyclopedia, dictionary....
Review: If you want to learn about ants, this is "THE" book for you. There is NO equal. It IS the most complete book about ants that I have ever seen. It did after all recieve a Pulitzer Prize in Gerneral Nonfiction. As a biologist, and avid ant farm keeper, this text book really sparked my intellectual interest in ants.
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