Review by Choice Review
The Rocky Mountain locust plagues of the 1870s devastated the crops of recent settlers. This phenomenon threatened the economic promise envisioned for the region by government, industry, and immigrants. Lockwood (natural sciences and humanities, Univ. of Wyoming) recounts how the locust affected every aspect of American life on the prairie and how public and private institutions and personalities arose to forge new public policies. He also examines the enigma of how what was at one moment a seminal and devastating natural disaster could at the next moment disappear. Lockwood looks at how the legacy of the Rocky Mountain locust, now a relict, lives on today in the policies and attitudes of Americans and institutions. This multifarious tale about an extinct hexapod is told by an erudite biped with a penchant for metaphor. For example, Lockwood describes flooding by noting that overgrazing results in "an already bulimic watershed that binges on the winter snowpack and then purges the spring runoff." The point of this tome is not the science imparted, which, given the editorial equivalent of a "locust body bag," would distill into a few prosaic pages, but its documentation of the impact wrought by the locust on human affairs. This uniquely rendered story deserves a wide audience. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. All levels. M. K. Harris Texas A&M University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
There's no dearth of eye-opening facts in this mostly fascinating, occasionally daunting, story of scientific sleuthing. Among them: North America is now the only inhabited continent without a locust species; in the years of greatest plague, 1874-1877, voracious swarms devoured half of America's annual agricultural production; the vast infestation of 1875 comprised perhaps 3.5 trillion locusts, an incomprehensible biomass stacked as much as half a mile high, 110 miles wide and 1,800 miles long; and (Fear Factor fans, take note) locusts, along with grasshoppers and crickets, were touted by one early entomologist as a nutritiously efficient food source. Lockwood (Grasshopper Dreaming), who fancies himself the Columbo of this particular disappearing-bug mystery, sometimes loses his lay readers in the fussiness of scientific methodology and the minutiae of genus nomenclature-including why the still-extant grasshopper is not a locust (however, the aside, "We spend a lot of time peering at grasshopper penises," does cut nicely through the fog of jargon). His account details years of combing crumbling archives, dissecting desiccated specimens and finally drilling into fast-melting Rocky Mountain glaciers to retrieve slushy locust body parts-an obsessive quest to discover why a species unexpectedly vanished a century ago in just a few years. This is a compelling work of popular science and ecological conjecture, buttressed smartly by an observant cultural, political, agricultural and economic history of 19th-century frontier America. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
During the 1870s, terrifying mile-long swarms of locusts ravaged American farms and caused economic havoc. Mysteriously, these invasions disappeared only a few years later (the last sighting occurred in Manitoba in 1902). In this lively history of the Rocky Mountain locust and its impact on the American West (mainly west of the Mississippi River), Lockwood (natural sciences & humanities, Univ. of Wyoming; Grasshopper Dreaming) goes well beyond the biology and ecology of the insect itself to deal with the important economic, political, and social consequences of its appearance. In colorful detail, Lockwood profiles several of the foremost entomologists and politicians of the day as they attempted to grapple with the problems locusts caused. He also recounts his ultimately successful quest to unravel the mystery of their disappearance: early settlers had unknowingly destroyed the locusts' breeding grounds just as the insect experienced a natural decline in population. As a bonus, the author shares some of his own experiences and ideas on the practice of science. This highly readable glimpse of an important piece of American agricultural history is strongly recommended for all public and academic libraries.-William H. Wiese, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In prose as bright as a song, entomologist Lockwood relates the brief but devastating 19th-century reign of the Rocky Mountain locust, his research into its mysterious disappearance, and its impact on American history and science. "They were the leitmotif of the Great Plains, as powerful a life force as the great herds of bison," writes Lockwood (Natural Sciences and Humanities/Univ. of Wyoming; Grasshopper Dreaming, not reviewed). Locusts were mighty destructive too; the text has the ring of Jeremiah as the author describes swarms whose numbers dimmed the sun like an eclipse, the approach of the winged creatures sounding like a wildfire, the cascading bands of nymphs like waterfalls, as they scoured the earth, consuming everything from crops to tool handles to the clothes off a settler's back. Lockwood also describes the extraordinary measures taken in attempts to control the insect, from days of prayer to a prototype of napalm, and the social transformation that the locust partly inspired: "the virtue of hard, honest work was supplanted by a new standard of worth." (Money, of course.) The feeling of many in those days, Lockwood writes, was that locust plagues were divine chastisements for wickedness, and the wretched farmer had no one to blame but himself. Still, others of a more rationalistic nature sought answers elsewhere, and Lockwood introduces them with appealingly waggish humor: "A European artist-turned-farmer/writer-turned-entomologist teamed up with a Harvard zoologist-turned-physician-turned-entomologist and a country-lawyer-turned-minister-turned-entomologist to form the first U.S. Entomological Commission." Then, inexplicably, the locusts were gone. Lockwood considers all the conjectures, including the roles of alfalfa and the extirpation of the bison, then tenders his own fieldwork on the matter, displaying the eye of a patient observer and the talents of a thoughtful, descriptive writer. His clearly articulated theory, as complex but lovely as a quadrille, has gained wide acceptance. A smart piece of natural history that spills over into social, political, and scientific commentary. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
