This was a weighty tome on wasps – all you ever needed to know about these under-appreciated insects. There is a ton of interesting information in here, and my only real complaint was how it was organized.
Going into this I really didn’t know much more about wasps than the fact that you should avoid them. After reading this book I feel like I know a lot more, and I appreciated the author’s efforts to educate people. She obviously has a lot of love for the subject.
The most interesting parts for me were near the end of the book (on social wasps) – I probably would have been hooked more quickly if they were at the beginning. The author seemed to bring up different species of wasps in a random way – I found myself forgetting which species was which sometimes because of the random ways they appeared in the book. There was an odd chapter featuring a hypothetical dinner with Aristotle that didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the book.
Despite these complaints it was a quite interesting book and it made me want to read more on other social insects – maybe ants next time.
Next I’m going back to Martha Wells’ Murderbot books to finish off the last two!
