Overview

War weary after writing a book about Iraq, Peter Laufer joked before an audience that his next book would be about butterflies. The result: an invitation to a butterfly preserve in Nicaragua. From there he stumbled into a theater of intrigue full of strange and nefarious characters - all in pursuit of one of nature's most delicate creatures. Set in locales throughout the World, this fascinating book takes us into a behind-the-scenes world sure to alter our view the next time we delight in the colorful fluttering of butterflies in our yards.

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9781599215556

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Reviews

[A] compelling, all-angles examination. . . . Laufer delivers an absorbing science lesson for fans of the colorful bugs. -- Publishers Weekly Recommended for scientists and lay readers who enjoyed Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief. -- Library Journal Like The Orchid Thief, The Dangerous World of Butterflies takes us deep into the dark heart of obsessed collectors and the passionate activism of people working to repopulate species like the Palos Verdes blue. Worlds within worlds: Laufer, a veteran reporter on cultural and political borders, understands how these worlds cross and collide. His book is a Venn diagram of the beautiful and bizarre. -- Los Angeles Times [Laufer's] book is charming and his attention to detail, combined with a real gift for describing these fascinating characters -- like calling entomologist Arthur Shapiro an endless litany of intriguing butterfly stories -- made me want to read everything else he has written. --Andrew Ervin, Washington Po

A charming but slightly scattershot meditation on butterflies and the people who love them.Radio journalist Laufer (Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq, 2008, etc.), who usually covers grimmer topics like the Iraq war and the immigration debate, turned to this subject on a lark. Asked on a nationally televised reading what he would write about next, he joked that his next book would be about butterflies and flowers. Jane Foulds, the owner of a butterfly reserve in Nicaragua, took him seriously and invited him to begin his research with the creatures she and her husband collected and bred for export in the Central American rainforest. After immersing himself in butterfly lore and visiting Foulds' reserva, he began to fall in love with the delicate-looking insects. Being a journalist, however, he naturally found his to controversy between breeders like the Fouldses, who sell butterflies in bulk to celebrants who release them for effect at weddings or funerals, and purists like academic Jeffrey Glassberg, who argues that butterflies should be left alone to delight us in their natural habitats. Laufer investigated the economic war between commercial loggers and naturalists in Mexico's Sierra Nevada, where the monarchs' breeding ground is imperiled. He also came across smugglers of endangered species and the agents on their trail, artists who use butterfly scales like paint on their canvases and lepidopterophobes who break into a sweat at the sight of a buckeye or swallowtail. Upon meeting the eccentric creationist who owns Florida's Butterfly World, Laufer proselytized about metamorphosis and intelligent design. Disappointingly, he was too charmed by the magic to get a Darwinian perspective. Given his otherwise omnivorous approach to the material and his claim to be on the evolution side of the debate, it's one important leaf Laufer left unturned.A flawed but pleasing survey of nature's most beautiful insects. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Peter Laufer, P.h.D., is the author of more than a dozen books that deal with social and political issues, including Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq, Wetback Nation: The Case for Opening the Mexican-American Border, and Iron Curtain Rising: A Personal Journey through the Changing Landscape of Eastern Europe. He is the coanchor of The Peter Laufer Show on radio station Green 960 in San Francisco. More about his books, documentary films, and broadcasts, which have won the George Polk, Robert F. Kennedy, Edward R. Murrow, and other awards, can be found at peterlaufer.com.

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