The Spirit of Butterflies: Myth, Magic, and Art

Rating:
Summary: You'll Be Happily Surprised-- and Entranced
Review: This book succeeds both as a tremendous joy for the general reader and a serious treatment of its subject. It is perhaps the best, maybe the only, book on the market right now treating its subject well and completely. Exceeding the breadth of its title, the book actually treats the cultural significance of butterflies throughout history. This is no small feat. Butterflies have been taken by many cultures to inculcate hope, rebirth, transformation and transcendence, matters at the heart of mankind's internal concern for many millennia. Despite its masterful photography and copious illustrations, Ms. Manos-Jones's production immediately belies any notion that it is simply a "coffee table book". The chapter titles well illustrate the book's topical landscape-- for example "The Sacred Butterfly", "The Artful Butterfly", "The Verbal Butterfly", [famous] "Butterfly People", and so on. By the time you've gotten through each of the ten chapters, be you butterfly buff or butterfly scholar, you will probably be surprised that, concerning this topic, you "didn't know the half of it". It is important to point out that Ms. Manos-Jones brings to this book a well-informed knowledge both of butterflies and world environmental issues. In life, she wears another hat-- as an environmentalist associated with the important Michoacan Reforestation Fund-- a premier conservation group working to protect Monarch butterfly overwintering habitats in Mexico. Given these credentials, the book is a really wedding of Ms. Manos-Jones' professional level expertise on conservation and the pure love of her subject-- butterflies. This book can be recommended wholeheartedly to the general reader and the informed butterfly enthusiast alike. I imagine that a few scholars and historians will want to dig into it as well.