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An American Encounter With The Beauty Of The World
Pantheon
April 2013
On Sale: April 9, 2013
416 pages
ISBN: 0375422935
EAN: 9780375422935
Kindle: B009Y4I4PQ
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
With 32 pages of full-color inserts and black-and-white
illustrations throughout.
From one of our most
highly regarded historians, here is an original and
engrossing chronicle of nineteenth-century America’s
infatuation with butterflies, and the story of the
naturalists who unveiled the mysteries of their
existence.
A product of William Leach’s
lifelong love of butterflies, this engaging and elegantly
illustrated history shows how Americans from all walks of
life passionately pursued butterflies, and how through their
discoveries and observations they transformed the character
of natural history. Leach focuses on the correspondence and
scientific writings of half a dozen pioneering
lepidopterists who traveled across the country and
throughout the world, collecting and studying unknown and
exotic species. In a book as full of life as the subjects
themselves and foregrounding a collecting culture now on the
brink of vanishing, Leach reveals how the beauty of
butterflies led Americans into a deeper understanding of the
natural world. He shows, too, that the country’s enthusiasm
for butterflies occurred at the very moment that another
form of beauty—the technological and industrial objects
being displayed at world’s fairs and commercial shows—was
emerging, and that Americans’ attraction to this new beauty
would eventually, and at great cost, take precedence over
nature in general and butterflies in particular.
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