Insectopolis
A Natural History
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- £12.99
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- £12.99
Publisher Description
Finalist for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary
Shortlisted for the 2025 Wainwright Prize for Illustrative Books
One of Library Journal's Best Books of 2025 • A Booklist Editors' Choice for Best Graphics Novels of 2025 • One of The Beat's Best Comics of 2025 • One of Comics Grinder's Best Graphic Novels of 2025 • One of The Comics Journal's Best Comics of 2025
Award-winning cartoonist Peter Kuper transports readers through the 400-million-year history of insects and the remarkable entomologists who have studied them.
This visually immersive work of graphic nonfiction dives into a world where ants, cicadas, bees, and butterflies visit a library exhibition that displays their stories and humanity’s connection to them throughout the ages. Kuper’s thrilling visual feast layers history and science, color and design, to tell the remarkable tales of dung beetles navigating by the stars, hawk-size prehistoric dragonflies hunting prey, and mosquitoes changing the course of human history.
Kuper also illuminates pioneering naturalists, from well-known figures like E. O. Wilson and Rachel Carson to unheralded luminaries like Charles Henry Turner, the Black American scholar who documented arthropod intelligence, and Maria Sybilla Merian, the seventeenth-century German regarded as the mother of entomology.
Galvanized by the sixth extinction and the ongoing insect crisis, Kuper takes readers on an unforgettable journey.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Eisner winner Kuper (Ruins) delivers a lyrical graphic history of the relationship between insects and humans. From griffonflies the size of hawks that "ruled the skies" during the Carboniferous era to how malaria impacted conquerors worldwide (Hannibal lost an eye to it), insects—all 10 quintillion of them—have constantly fluttered and crawled their way through history. The narrative opens with a brother and sister heading to an exhibit on insects at the New York Public Library. Then a disaster wipes out humanity, and insects reign. "Much, much later," talking monarch butterflies, dung beetles, and other insects explore the building ("Wow! An entire library filled with exhibits about us!"). From bees to ant farms, how humans tolerate and even sometimes deify ("I was sacred, damnit" the dung beetle shouts) the ubiquitous life-forms is rendered in acrobatic storytelling. In addition to profiles of scientists like Rachel Carson, other human notables, including novelist Vladimir Nabokov—a dedicated butterfly enthusiast—get their due. A visual tour de force, the page layouts juxtapose myriad insects against the majestic architecture of the library, and the highly detailed drawings of the exhibits contain countless Easter eggs, including QR codes that lead to supplemental audio. Kuper's visuals are breathtaking and many moments, like a monarch suddenly perceiving the magnetic field that will guide her home, are magical. It's a stunning achievement.
