Rating: 
Summary: Better than a Textbook
Review: My science teacher had this book out in the laboratory, along with several other books and guides that are current and invited us to spend that period browsing and reading. I checked this book out and also the one on Nabokov's butterfly work-- Nabokov's Blues-- for Thanksgiving holiday. Ms. Gordon's book is much better than a textbook or fieldguide because it provides an exciting story about ants and how they work. The vivid desciptions personalize ants and make it more like a book verson of "A Bug's Life" movie-- but SERIOUS about the science; so is the story about Nabokov the scientist, which reads with a plot. Ants at Work was easy to read, extremely interesting and probably taught me more about ants than I could have learned from a textbook or lab manual. If it had one drawback against the Nabokov story it was only that Nabokov's exciting work on butterflies, as told by Mr. Johnson and Mr. Coates, had an ongoing plot-- about the famous writer's life and other scientists too. But, Ms. Gordon's book was fascinating and I thought my teacher's idea to have us learn about ants and butterflies by reading these more exciting books was a great idea. Both Ants at Work and Nabokov's Blues are perhaps best suited for adults after high school but I had no trouble with either book and sure felt I learned more about insects reading these books than I would have studying a dry textbook. It was a good suggestion by our teacher for the holidays.
Rating: 
Summary: full of promise, but ultimately dull
Review: The subject matter is fascinating, but I found this (rather slim) book very dry and dull. As another reviewer noted, it's not really a book about ants or ant society in general; it's the story of Prof. Gordon's research into one particular *kind* of ant, told in the first person. A brief web search turned up more interesting information in a minute or two than I found in the whole of the book; Sorry, but don't waste your money.
Rating: 
Summary: First hand info, and a fresh view on ants
Review: What I loved in this book is that it doesn't just tell you how smart colonies are and how well the self-organization works. As a mathematician with a background in alife and ant-like models, this wouldn't surprise me in 2000. What's new and interesting is the focus on the colony as the metha-organism, as the new unit-of-selection for evolution, leaving in a field populated by a lot of colonies; this leads to the question of the morphology and morphogenesis of the colony as such, which fascinating questions and possible answers. One of the ideas which the author proposes, with a clever insight, is about the relation between the size of the colony and the task-allocation dynamics, through the use of a same response to the interaction frecuency... An idea which, as a mathematician, I'm eager to explore.
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