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Summary: EXCELLENT, WELL WRITTEN, WRY AND WONDERFULLY OBSERVANT.
Review: MR.GRICE IS AN ELEGANT WRITER DEALING WITH AN INELEGANT TOPIC--INSECTS. HIS DESCRIPTIONS ARE WONDERFUL, DISTURBING AND VIVID. READING ABOUT THE WEB-MAKING HABITS OF THE BLACK WIDOW SPIDER FASCINATED ME AND I SPENT A WHOLE EVENING READING ABOUT CREATURES I USUALLY FOUND REPULSIVE, WHEN I FOUND THEM. I NOW HAVE A NEW RESPECT FOR THE CREATURES LIVING IN MY BACKYARD. THIS IS A GREAT BOOK TO READ, BUT BEST READ INDOORS. I AM SQEAMISH BUT IMPRESSED.
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Summary: Expand your view of the world
Review: Much is made of the essays and what they tell us about the creatures at hand. What I found equally fascinating is how the author reminds the reader that they too are predators and how truly violent and unpredictable the world can be. His explanations of evolution offer additional insight.
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Summary: the sinister fascination of notorious predators is gripping
Review: Only an author so fascinated by spiders that he admits to spending hours watching them spin their gossamer webs, could weave such a series of tales about animal predators. The contents of this book indicate that the reader will soon be immersed in essays about black widows, mantids, rattlesnakes, tarantulas, pigs, dogs, and the brown recluse . . . but this belies the fact that Grice often, and with great ease, segues between families, orders, and whole kingdoms of life. Halfway thru the "widow" chapter in fact, Grice begins his first of many deviations from the subject at hand, peppering the reader with facts about various beetle species and the short-lived caterpillar that becomes lunch. In the midst of the "mantid" chapter, we not only learn that baboons are pack hunters, but that leopards have a taste for human flesh - a grisly fact that is borne out by the fossil record. This is not a book for the squeamish or for people preferring to encounter wildlife behind a glass window of a terrarium exhibit in the zoo. The "rattlesnake" chapter reads like a Stephen King novel (with the plot removed) as Grice introduces us to haunting images of winter dens full of seething masses of poisonous snakes, details of the flesh-eating venom rattlers possess, and introductions to a whole host of the judgment-challenged humans who participate in rattlesnake roundups for fun and profit. And, for good measure he combines all this with descriptions of the terror of what it must be like to be buried alive. Perhaps Grice says it best when he writes, "To understand the pig, we should now take a long detour into the lives of insects and salamanders." I heartily recommend this book to anyone wanting to take a detour into the natural world without leaving the comfort of their armchair. _The Red Hourglass_ is a well-written map to the fascinating animal/animal interactions which drive life on this planet. Up and down the food chain, everybody gets an opportunity to be a predator, and it's not always the big and strong (and human) who survive.
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Summary: This book is one of the best pieces of literature in history
Review: The man is walking down the street
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Summary: a real eye-opener
Review: The Red Hourglass ranks among my favorite non-fiction books. Some of the stories Mr. Grice relates are downright creepy -- especially the mantis vs. the giant cricket. I did find myself disagreeing with him on a few points, especially his assertion that humans somehow fit into the middle of the food chain. I'm puzzled how anyone could doubt our species' claim as apex predator when we keep lions and orcas in zoos for the amusement of our children. Still, I don't have to agree with every assumption to enjoy a remarkably well-written and carefully considered acount of the brutal world that surrounds us every day.
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Summary: The book was well assembelled and i enjoyed it
Review: the stories were scary and interestin
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Summary: Funny and horrific
Review: This book bears as much relation to dry science texts as the cartoons of Charles Addams bear to real life. It's creepy, informative and delightfully engaging. My sweetie and I enjoyed reading it together in bed, where it's strange turns brought us closer together - in the center of the mattress, well away from dark edges where creepy crawlers lurk. No bleeding-heart liberal he, Gordon Grice is _still_ the kind of boy who likes keeping strange critters in jars and sometimes pitting them against each other. By showing us what he's learned in these staged confrontations, he raises the experience from sadistic sensationalism to memorable scientific examples. Highly reccomended!
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Summary: Fascinating book!
Review: This is a well-written and researched book; fascinating and painlessly educational. I borrowed mine from the library.
It would benefit from photos and a bibliography/footnotes. The lack of these gives the material an anecdotal quality.
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Summary: Danger is everywhere, especially the toilet!
Review: What an INCREDIBLE book! Bought it after reading about it here at Amazon and I did'nt regret it. The essays are well written, detailed enough to intrigue those with advanced knowledge of biology, yet simple enough to ensnare(no pun intended!!) the interested layman. Grice does all his subjects justice, showing the proper amount of enthusiasm and healthy fear, even for the pig-This ain't Charlotte's Web, baby!! My only wish is that this book would get as much publicity as a Clancy or Grisham novel, cause I was never afraid to go into my basement after reading those two....now, I'm constantly on the lookout for all creatures, great and small, who might be lurking, waiting to extract revenge for entering their domain..If you are a nature lover, or just interested in the unusual habits of little thought about creatures, GET THIS BOOK NOW!!!!
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Summary: Grice takes on arthropods with Poe-like sensitivity
Review: What the reader gets with this book are seven essays written by a literary/humanities based college professor on seven particular predators: the black widow, the praying mantis, rattlesnakes, tarantulas, pigs, dogs, and the brown recluse spider. The writing is surpisingly good and the subject matter, while somewhat dark and gory, is fascinating. The reader from Michigan calls this book 'backyard naturalism' in a derogatory manner. I am a biology major and, although the majority of Grice's claims appear consistent with similar data I have seen, this is not a hard science book; criticizing it in that context is an apples verses oranges category mistake. Conversely, I praise this work as 'backyard naturalism' at its best. I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Red Hourglass from front to back. Take a bit of Peter Matthiessen's literary organicism, a pinch of Steven King's macabre involvment, E. O. Wilson's entomology, a dash of Desiderius Erasmus' sad, pragmatic humor, and some of Montaigne's candor, and you can wile away sumptuous moments zoosynthesizing the adventure of the 'The Incredible Shrinking Man' crossed with a bored boy's deific experimentation with arthropods, among other animals; all written with starkness and skill. What's a long pig? one may ask. The very sight of egregious brown recluse bites makes me kiss the soil of northern California. This book is a good mix of the literary and scientific milieus. It draws one in by the curiousity and repulsion of the subject matter as ruse for the author's peculiar expository skill.
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