Texas Bug Book: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Short reviews of recently published books.

Reviewed by Jay Hardwig, Fri., Oct. 29, 1999

Texas Bug Book

by C. Malcolm Beck and John Howard Garrett

University of Texas Press, 192 pp., $24.95 (paper)

Subtitled The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, the Texas Bug Book is a genuine insect encyclopedia, with hundreds of pictorial profiles of our six-legged friends, from the aphid to the weevil to everything in between (check out the legs on that katydid). Information includes habitat, feeding habits, economic importance, and organic control; the juicier entries add a "Malcolm Story" or a "Howard Story" -- a short narrative tidbit relating some aspect of Beck and Garrett's buglovin' souls. The philosophy here is organic, the approach engaging, and the breadth comprehensive.

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