The Forgotten Pollinators

Rating:
Summary: an eye opener
Review: A great book, fun to read. Its a real eye opener - with messages we all need to take with us. We're so dependent on the pollinators yet their work is so transparent to us. This book lays it all out. Its quite timeless in both the message and the great info on different types of insects and animals. You can learn a lot in this book on a lot of different levels

Rating:
Summary: an eye opener
Review: A great book, fun to read. Its a real eye opener - with messages we all need to take with us. We're so dependent on the pollinators yet their work is so transparent to us. This book lays it all out. Its quite timeless in both the message and the great info on different types of insects and animals. You can learn a lot in this book on a lot of different levels

Rating:
Summary: The world is complex and wonderful, especially reproduction
Review: Ever wonder where most plants come from? They come from seeds. Ever wonder where seeds come from? They come from sex. Ever wonder what plant sex is about (or why this is an issue)? It comes from beetles, bees, butterflies, moths, birds, bats and winged pseudogenitalia in general, whether great or small. Pollination is the key to life on the terrestrial earth. Pollination of plants is also the key to life in much of the aquatic part of our planet, which is about the only omission for which the authors might be faulted. It is a mind-expanding exercise, to be sure, to ask ourselves what would happen if pollinator "X" suddenly disappeared from the scene. Buchmann and Nabhan have taken great care both to inform us that all would not be lost, because pollinator "Y" or "Z" is frequently waiting in the wings. But in many, many cases, pollinator "X" has never been studied and cannot even be named, let alone conserved

Rating:
Summary: a new Silent Spring
Review: Like Silent Spring, this book surprizes and alarms. It is well written, rarely bogging down, and opens new ways of understanding with almost every chapter - the perils of patchwork preservation, the honeybee as an invading exotic, the concept of nectar corridors for long distance pollinators. Well done indeed.

Rating:
Summary: Discovering the facts of life
Review: Reading this book I felt as though my basic education was flawed by my not having been taught the supreme importance of the insect world to all life on earth. Each page presented fascinating, sometimes alarming information, about our natural world that I had never seen, though it is always right in front of me. The most enlightening book I have read in years!

Rating:
Summary: Alert to story in current issue of Time Magazine
Review: The July 15th issue of Time Magazine, on newstands now, carries a terrific story on pollinators and the role they play in the production of most of our food on page 60. Additional reviews are forthcoming in the book review sections of many major metropolitan papers.

Rating:
Summary: And then there was none...
Review: This book really captures the beauty of the Southwest amoungst other places where pollinators play a crucial role. Buchmann and Nabhan tell a tale that is both dazzling and at the time disturbing: the lost of pollinators and how they impact our lives in so many ways. The book brings about how humankind takes for granted the timeless work these creatures do. Unfortunately, the writing style of the book tends to be repetative and thoughts fragmented like some of the stories were torn right out of a journal (which they probably were). However, overall a book that will add greater insight and depth to any human concerned about the environment.