Nature, Insects & Arachnids, Field Guides
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Overview
The monarch butterfly is our best-known and best-loved insect, and its annual migration over thousands of miles is an extraordinary natural phenomenon. Robert Michael Pyle, "one of America's finest natural history writers" (Sue Hubbell), set out late one summer to follow the monarchs south from their northernmost breeding ground in British Columbia. CHASING MONARCHS tells the engrossing story of his adventurous journey with these graceful wanderers—down the Columbia, Snake, Bear, and Colorado rivers, across the Bonneville Salt Flats, and through the Chiricahua Mountains to Mexico, returning north along the California coast. Part travelogue, part scientific study, CHASING MONARCHS is one of the most fascinating books ever written about butterflies. "[Pyle's] delightful anecdotes, thought-provoking philosophical questions and personal passion make this chronicle a potential classic" (Monarch News).
Synopsis
The monarch butterfly is our best-known and best-loved insect, and its annual migration over thousands of miles is an extraordinary natural phenomenon. Robert Michael Pyle, "one of America's finest natural history writers" (Sue Hubbell), set out late one summer to follow the monarchs south from their northernmost breeding ground in British Columbia. CHASING MONARCHS tells the engrossing story of his adventurous journey with these graceful wanderers—down the Columbia, Snake, Bear, and Colorado rivers, across the Bonneville Salt Flats, and through the Chiricahua Mountains to Mexico, returning north along the California coast. Part travelogue, part scientific study, CHASING MONARCHS is one of the most fascinating books ever written about butterflies. "[Pyle's] delightful anecdotes, thought-provoking philosophical questions and personal passion make this chronicle a potential classic" (Monarch News).
Monarch News
[Pyle's] delightful anecdotes, thought provoking philosophical questions and personal passion makes this chronicle a potential classic.
Editorials
Michiko Kakutani
...Pyle chronicles his efforts to follow the monarchs on their winter migration by tracking them on the ground....By far the most absorbing portions...deal with Pyle's interaction with the monarchs...and his musings on their history and their habits....Pyle wants to believe "that there was a little more of something like freedom" built into a monarch's system..."— The New York Times
America West
If you enjoy the intellectual stimulus of traveling the footsteps of scientists, you'll like Robert Michael Pyle's Chasing Monarchs... Enthused by his enthusiasm, we come away with a heightened appreciation of the lives of birds and insects.Monarch News
[Pyle's] delightful anecdotes, thought provoking philosophical questions and personal passion makes this chronicle a potential classic.Stewart Kellerman
One-third memoir, one-third nature walk, one-third travelogue and one-third research paper — yes, four-thirds of a book....[W]hen he's not trying to out-Nabokov Nabokov, he can be quite moving, as in this description of female monarchs at the end of a northward migration... —The New York Times Book ReviewPublishers Weekly -
Scientists know that monarch butterflies migrate thousands of miles each year between northern parts of the U.S. and Mexico or California, but no one has actually seen how they do it. So ecologist Pyle Where Bigfoot Walks decided to try. His method: to find individual butterflies at their northernmost habitat, follow them as far as possible, then repeat the process with other individual butterflies along the southward route. Amazingly, this haphazard approach worked. Pyle began near the Canadian border, at the Columbia River, and followed monarchs to the Mexican border--covering 9462 miles in 57 days and proving that western monarchs do not all migrate to California, as commonly believed. Though Pyle's account of his rambling trip suggests that much of it must have been more fun to live through than to read about, he enlivens uneventful sections with butterfly arcana, humorous reminiscences and rueful observations on the environmental impact of cattle ranching, pesticides, dams and jet skis. Pyle's laid-back humor is appealing, his descriptive talents are often poetic he remembers monarchs pouring into a Mexican valley "like a heavy orange vapor" in which individuals resembled "flecks of foam and water as they top a waterfall and plunge down into the foaming mass". His memoir serves both as tribute to this majestic insect and as a thoughtful tour of the contemporary American West. Detailed sectional maps would have enhanced the book's appeal; endpaper map not seen by PW. Aug. FYI: Pyle is currently editing a collection of Vladimir Nabokov's butterfly writings. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.KLIATT
In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in the monarch butterfly and its incredible journey of migration. Funds have been started to save some of its habitats and there has been concern about their depleting numbers. Author Robert Pyle, with a doctorate in ecology from Yale, has a scientist's view of the butterfly, but a writer's eloquence for expressing a great deal of information beautifully. He literally follows the monarchs south from British Colombia to Mexico and returns north along the California coast. This book is a wonderful merging of travelogue and scientific treatise. For anyone who marvels at the mystery of nature (how do they know where to travel?) and appreciates the expression of life in even its smaller representatives, this will be a joyful book. Writers like Robert Pyle, who make learning so easy, while remaining complete, are also a joy. For all public and academic libraries. Category: Nature & Ecology. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 1999, Houghton Mifflin, Mariner, 307p. map. bibliog. index., Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Katherine E. Gillen; Libn., Luke AFB Lib., AZLibrary Journal
Victorian-era butterfly hunters are often portrayed as genteel aristocrats, but today's breed, like the author of this book, are gritty, adventurous, and far-wandering. Over two months and across 9000 miles, Pyle tracked and tagged monarch butterflies along their migratory route from northern British Columbia to Mexico. Because he is an ecologist, Pyle gives a solid general account of the state of scientific knowledge of the monarchs and their remarkable travels. Because he is also an award-winning natural history writer, he vividly conveys the lure of the butterflies, the quirky passions of those who study them, and the beauty and diversity of Western landscapes. Not only is this an entertaining work for general readers, but professional entomologists could also mine its observations for clues into the biology and behaviors of monarchs. For all libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 4/15/99.]--Gregg Sapp, Univ. of Miami Lib., Coral Gables, FL Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.Michiko Kakutani
...Pyle chronicles his efforts to follow the monarchs on their winter migration by tracking them on the ground....By far the most absorbing portions...deal with Pyle's interaction with the monarchs...and his musings on their history and their habits....Pyle wants to believe "that there was a little more of something like freedom" built into a monarch's system..."— The New York Times
Stewart Kellerman
One-third memoir, one-third nature walk, one-third travelogue and one-third research paper — yes, four-thirds of a book....[W]hen he's not trying to out-Nabokov Nabokov, he can be quite moving, as in this description of female monarchs at the end of a northward migration...— The New York Times Book Review
Kirkus Reviews
Pyle (Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Great Divide, 1995, etc.) takes a long, slow ramble with the wanderers, a.k.a. monarch butterflies, ostensibly looking for clues to their far-flung migratory behavior•but really just having a good time mooching around outdoors. That the monarch engages in the longest, most spectacular mass movement of insects is well known. It journeys from its continent-wide summertime diaspora to its astonishing winter be-ins high in the cool forests of Mexico and the coastal California fog belt. But, Pyle hastily points out, the theory needs some fine-tuning concerning which butterfly populations go to which wintering venue, and he thinks he ought to go look into the question. Thus starts his two-month sabbatical with the monarchs, chronicled here with an enviably laid-back demeanor and an unflagging thrill in simply being outside, walking attentively through the landscape. Monarchs may be his quarry, but seeing that there are precious few of them at the journey's start, up in British Columbia, Pyle is just as happy with the Mormon metalmarks and Arizona sisters and hackberry emperors, with yellowbelly ponderosa, partridges flushed from fields of peppermint, "a brilliant picture-wing fly with a gemmed thorax." As he does his easy shuffle to Mexico, he stops to have a good look around and sip a beer, serving as a natural and political historian; he keeps an eye peeled for monarchs on the move while delivering crisp, thoughtful lectures on protective coloration (for monarchs that means not camouflage, but a horn-blast of chromatic orange, reminding predators of their bitterness), orienteering with sun compasses and magnetic fields, or American Indianpetroglyphs that have been copyrighted as trademarks by upscale white resorts "in a stilling act of cultural appropriation." As for the monarchs, there do appear to be some transmontane migrants, a fact that runs counter to established thinking, although that will require further research. And say, isn't that a microbrewery over there? Natural history never went down easier. (Author tour)Book Details
Published
May 1, 2001
Publisher
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Pages
320
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780618127436