WebsiteAlways.com


The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators, by Gordon Grice


The black widow spider is notorious for eating her mate as they copulate, but how many of us know much more than that about this beautiful, mysterious, spider?

Grice collects black widows and keeps them in jars and studies them, and he tells us more than we care to know at times. But it is not just black widows that interest Grice, it is rattlesnakes, praying mantis, tarantula, pigs, dogs, and the recluse spider.

The Lives of the Predators is fascinating, strange, and scary, all at the same time. Grice writes with such vivid imagery that you can almost feel the hairy tarantula, and hear the particular sound of the black widows web as you brush through it.

Grice mixes us a venomous cocktail of personal accounts and tall tales; gruesome historic details that may have you questioning if you will ever eat pork again, and yet on the other hand he reveals how seemingly close humans still are to the animal kingdom.

As humans we feel that we are at the top of the food chain and that we have no natural predators who relish our flesh, but wait, that is not true at all! History reveals that as early as biblical times swine have eaten human corpses; in Africa leopards dine on humans regularly; and dogs are more dangerous to us than the wolf.

Grice's knowledge and research are impeccable. His interest in the life and death of his subjects is sometimes morbidly sadistic and it brings to mind an image of little boys who delight in tossing a poor grasshopper into a jar of red ants. But beside the morbidity is a side dish of humor when he describes the story of a man who was supposedly eaten by his hogs as, "?the man was old; he died of a heart attack or a stroke while feeding the pigs; and 'nothing was left of him but the shoes.' ?You have to be particularly suspicious of the heart attack diagnosed from the shoes."

After reading this book you will come away with a different awareness of both the animal kingdom and the insect world, and you can no longer look at a spider or a pig the same way, or your dog for that matter.

Copyright 2005 Cindy DeJager
Cindy DeJager owns Rosetta Stone Press, a publisher of metaphysical and mystical books. She writes book reviews of old and rare books, as well as sends out a monthly newsletter to local bookstores and libraries. You can find her reviews on her website at http://www.rosettastonepress.com


MORE RESOURCES:

December book reviews from Highlands Ranch Library
YourHub.com, CO - 21 minutes ago
By Margarita Engle The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom has won praise from children's literature experts because it does two things ...


Daredevil, X-Force among this week's comic book reviews
Creative Loafing, NC - 1 hour ago
By Carlton Hargro As usual, I read a ton of comics this week; however, no book stood out as incredibly good or awful. So for this edition of Comic ...


Children's Book Reviews
Publishers Weekly, NY - Nov 30, 2008
I Heard God Talking to Me: William Edmondson and His Stone Carvings Elizabeth Spires. FSG/Foster, $17.95 (64p) ISBN 978-0-374-33528-1 Of interest to adults ...


Book Reviews: Dawnkeepers
Monsters and Critics.com - Nov 30, 2008
By Sandy Amazeen Nov 30, 2008, 20:24 GMT Anderson’s second installment of The Final Prophecy series focuses on Nate Blackhawk and Alexis Gray, ...


Book Reviews
Dispatch Online, South Africa - Nov 28, 2008
By Jason Goodwin WHEN I first picked up The Bellini Card, I thought, “Here we go, another story about the wicked Muslims trying to overthrow all of ...


Book Reviews: 'Medical Miracles,' '7 Wheelchairs,' and 'The Sun ...
International Herald Tribune, France - Nov 28, 2008
Medical Miracles Doctors, Saints and Healing in the Modern World By Jacalyn Duffin Oxford University Press. 285 pages. $29.95. 7 Wheelchairs A Life Beyond ...


Book reviews: 'American Lightning' and 'Vacation'
International Herald Tribune, France - Nov 27, 2008
American Lightning Terror, Mystery, Movie-Making, and the Crime of the Century By Howard Blum 339 pages. Crown Publishers. $24.95. ...


John Freeman
Publishers Weekly, NY - 17 minutes ago
by Craig Morgan Teicher -- Publishers Weekly, 12/1/2008 In the past few years, space for book reviews has been steadily shrinking, leading some in the ...


Spreading 'Paw-liday' Cheer, One Critter at a Time
MarketWatch - 2 hours ago
Additionally, pet lovers can get the latest in pet news, videos, products and book reviews. And, for social networking pet lovers, be sure to visit ...


Business book reviews
Dallas Morning News, TX - Nov 23, 2008
By JIM PAWLAK / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News Over the next few decades, Generation Y will take the reins of power of American business. ...

Book-Reviews - Google News

Interesting articles | Home | site map | Link
© 2006
Thailand Tourism Breast enlargement Jobs Mahoubi.net Free Online Dating | Free personals | Married personals | Totally free personals | Dating online lakeland fl | Free dating sites | Travel Vacations | Multiple listing service real estate