By Boria Sax. Reaktion Books, 2025.

From ancient fables to modern science, insects and their metamorphoses have long inspired human understanding of life’s transitions. This original and engaging book traces how these transformations have shaped rituals around birth, marriage, and death, while also provoking deep questions about identity. Through stories that connect Zhuang Zhou’s butterfly dream to figures like Kafka, Merian, and Dürer, it explores the strange, beautiful, and sometimes unsettling ways cultures have understood insects—as miracles, messengers, or monsters. Blending humor, history, and environmental insight, Boria Sax offers an imaginative lens on the growing crisis of insect extinction. More than just a natural history, this is a cultural and philosophical journey that shows why losing insects means losing part of ourselves.

Boria Sax is the author of 20 books, mostly on animals in human culture. They have been translated into ten languages, into most of them multiple times, and have won awards for scholarship. He teaches in the English graduate program at Mercy University and at Sing Sing prison.