The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators

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Gordon Grice, a young essayist from rural western Oklahoma, writes winningly of insects in all their glory, basing his narrative on lifelong observations of creatures such as the black widow, praying mantis, brown recluse--and the occasional human being. For the black widow spider he professes an affectionate fascination, dangerous though the spider may be; for the brown recluse, a more dangerous creature still, he exhibits a healthy respect; for all the creatures who fall under his survey, he has many sympathies. Grice writes with good humor, even when he's writing of matters that are not for the squeamish, as when he describes the rather gruesome ways in which female mantises dispose of inconvenient mates or humans dispose of each other.

Book Description

Snake venom that digests human flesh. A building cleared of every living thing by a band of tiny spiders. An infant insect eating its living prey from within, saving the vital organs for last. These are among the deadly feats of natural engineering you'll witness in The Red Hourglass, prize-winning author Gordon Grice's masterful, poetic, often dryly funny exploration of predators he has encountered around his rural Oklahoma home.

Grice is a witty and intrepid guide through a world where mating ends in cannibalism, where killers possess toxins so lethal as to defy our ideas of a benevolent God, where spider remains, scattered like "the cast-off coats of untidy children," tell a quiet story of violent self-extermination. It's a world you'll recognize despite its exotic strangeness--the world in which we live. Unabashedly stepping into the mix, Grice abandons his role as objective observer with beguiling dark humor--collecting spiders and other vermin, decorating a tarantula's terrarium with dollhouse furniture, or forcing a battle between captive insects because he deems one "too stupid to live."

Kill. Eat. Mate. Die. Charting the simple brutality of the lives of these predators, Grice's starkly graceful essays guide us toward startling truths about our own predatory nature. The Red Hourglass brings us face to fanged face with the inadequacy of our distinctions between normal and abnormal, dead and alive, innocent and evil.

From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews:

Living things that creep upon the earth..........2007-04-04

An amateur naturalist's musings on the various vermin and mongrels he's studied over the years. The pieces are written in the style & tone of a monthly slickzine, which according to the flap copy is the kind of writer Prof. Grice is. He wisely stays away from attempting much actual zoology, instead confining himself to his own observations and philosophizing. These anecdotes make for the most effective pieces. A giant cricket devouring a frightened praying mantis; dogs being seized by bloodlust to kill rattlesnakes; and a whole, miniature cycle of rotating top predators in an old shed; all make for absorbing reading--if your tastes run to creepy-crawlies, that is. The chapter on pigs feels like makeweight, as he has little first-hand material in the way of predation to relate about that animal.

At the end, he cuts loose a sneer against scientists, behind which there's doubtless another book.

Totally engaging with a sardonic message.......2006-07-12

This is without doubt the most gruesomely graphic book on predation that I have ever read. The predators are: the black widow spider, the praying mantis, the rattlesnake, the tarantula, the pig, the dog, and the brown recluse spider. Another half dozen or so ghastly creatures also make their appearance such as the crocodile, a bizarre "cricket-beast," hawk wasps and wolf spiders, not to mention humans.

Gordon Grice, who is a gifted amateur naturalist who teaches humanities and English at Seward County Community College in Kansas is the kind of guy who collects crickets and spiders and beetles in jars so he can feed them live creatures and watch them chow down. He is the kind of guy who goes to rattlesnake roundups and breathes deeply. He is the kind of guy who stops for road kill and likes to attend vivisections. He's like the guy who goes to the top of a tall building just for the thrill of looking down; but what excites Grice's fancy is to watch how predators kill and devour their prey. The creepier the predator, the better. You can put those quick, clean and "humane" lion kills back in your VCR and watch it on TV. What Grice wants us to experience is exactly how the mandibles of the "cricket-beast"sound as they crunch through the beetle's exoskeleton and just how it feels to die, or nearly die, of rattlesnake or black widow venom.

He's not particularly interested in scholarship (there are no footnotes or references), although he is careful about letting us know when he thinks a certain report, say of a nine foot rattler, is probably an exaggeration. He is an excellent writer who knows the value of concrete detail, tersely put; and he has the scientist's love for finding out exactly how something happens. What he does that no other writer in my recall has done is to emphasize the disgusting and revolting details of predation without euphemism or the use of any fig leaves.

Be forewarned then that this is NOT the sort of nature book your eight-year-old grandson needs to read before going to bed--although if he gets his hands on it, he will! And he will have nightmares.

The question that might be asked is why is Grice so intend on rubbing our faces in the brutality of nature? Clearly he has an agenda over and above grossing us out. I get the idea that he thinks a lot of what we hear about ourselves and our fellow creatures is so much pollyannaish tripe. He doesn't say as much directly but consider this from page 245:

"There is actually nothing your average scientist hates more than information from nonscientists, all of whom he assumes to be unwashed, idol-worshipping degenerates good only for working on cars. The thing your average scientist despises second most is a fact that doesn't fit his theory..."

Grice is able to dazzle us with his own observations about the animals he studies, but being an English prof he knows that his standing in the scientific community is (or before he wrote this book, was) zilch. It's easy to identify with his frustration in this matter, and acknowledge that it is a shame that scientists tend to run the other way when they see a nonscientist coming, or that they will not give credence to ideas that come from nonscientists. And it is especially true that nothing is worse for a scientist than a fact that doesn't fit his theory!

Grice's inclusion of dogs and pigs as predators goes toward making what I see as one of the messages of this book. Simply put, we humans are domesticated animals. We have--helped along by our dogs, pigs, sheep and cattle, our grains and fruits, our social and political structures--become "tamed." Grice darkly hints, as H. G. Wells did in his novel The Time Machine (1895), that this may not be all to the good. With our effete fussiness about the vulgarity of the animal world we are becoming like the Eloi who will be eaten by the brutal Morlocks. If we lose our ability to act without inhibition as the creatures Grice describes do when in pursuit of their dinners, we may indeed become something akin to sheep. Grice doesn't mention it directly but there is some considerable evidence that domesticated animals are not as smart as the wild kind.

After advising us of just how horrid dogs can be, especially as pack hunters, Grice presents the counterpoint: "The care of animals, along with the tending of crops, is a root of our social structure. It dictates our need for permanent homes, our construction of walls and fences, ultimately our economy and culture. The dog makes this possible, because it was the dog, with his keener nose and ears, that made it feasible for us to protect livestock from nocturnal predators. Our tools, intelligence, and eyesight complement his senses; we share a territorial instinct that gives us a common goal." (p 231)

He adds, "This bond [between man and dog] distinguishes the dog from other canids. It also distinguishes modern humanity from its older branches, because it is an essential element of the change from hunter-gatherer to the settled life." (p. 232)

Finally, in a kind of summation, after observing the collapse and then rise again of the brown recluse spider populations in his shed, Grice writes, "Serial murder, war, genocide, and even witch hunts have all been linked to population changes and competition. We let ourselves off the hook ["kid ourselves," I would say] when we define such killing as 'abnormal.' We put the behavior at a distance, letting ourselves think of it as something alien, something we normal folk could never do.... But the capacity to murder, to become demonic, is in our nature.

"One of our natures, anyway." (p. 258)

Non-fiction work that reads like a monster story.......2005-03-29

Gordon Grice has a disturbing fascination with bugs, spiders in particular. But his fascination is our entertainment, as he writes in flowing prose his observations of these nasty little crawlers. The Red Hourglass is an extremely well-written account of the habits and habitats of things that creep in the night.

The book is divided into seven different studies, Black Widow, Mantid, Rattlesnake, Tarantula, Pig, Canid, and Recluse. Though Grice gives fascinating accounts of the darker aspects of pigs and dogs, it is painfully clear in his writings that his love is truly for the spider.

The Red Hourglass is a non-fiction book that is written with such interesting and personal observations that it feels somewhat like a monster story at times. If you want to find out more about these creepy, crawly, nasty little arachnids, Grice is an excellent way to learn. This would be a great book to get kids started on taking interest with biology or even anthropology studies, it's that well written

And I hate spiders. Go ahead and grab up a copy of The Red Hourglass, I doubt you will ever find non-fiction reading as fun as Grice, having the same flair with his biology studies as Kurt Eicheneald does with his political studies. Enjoy!

Grice takes on arthropods with Poe-like sensitivity.......2003-02-13

What the reader gets with this book are seven essays written by a literary/humanities based college professor on seven particular predators: the black widow, the praying mantis, rattlesnakes, tarantulas, pigs, dogs, and the brown recluse spider. The writing is surpisingly good and the subject matter, while somewhat dark and gory, is fascinating.

The reader from Michigan calls this book 'backyard naturalism' in a derogatory manner. I am a biology major and, although the majority of Grice's claims appear consistent with similar data I have seen, this is not a hard science book; criticizing it in that context is an apples verses oranges category mistake. Conversely, I praise this work as 'backyard naturalism' at its best. I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Red Hourglass from front to back. Take a bit of Peter Matthiessen's literary organicism, a pinch of Steven King's macabre involvment, E. O. Wilson's entomology, a dash of Desiderius Erasmus' sad, pragmatic humor, and some of Montaigne's candor, and you can wile away sumptuous moments zoosynthesizing the adventure of the 'The Incredible Shrinking Man' crossed with a bored boy's deific experimentation with arthropods, among other animals; all written with starkness and skill. What's a long pig? one may ask. The very sight of egregious brown recluse bites makes me kiss the soil of northern California.

This book is a good mix of the literary and scientific milieus. It draws one in by the curiousity and repulsion of the subject matter as ruse for the author's peculiar expository skill.

Riveting.......2002-11-19

Who knew just how deadly the world around us was? Grice covers a wide range of beasts: Spiders (Black Widow, Tarantula, Recluse a.k.a. Violin Spider), rattlesnake, pig, dogs (wolves, coyotes, jackals) and the praying mantis. He has a lyrical eloquence and interstices natural philosophy into the essays, making the book far more than a recitation or list of aspects of bestial killers.
One slightly disturbing feature is Grice's juvenile behavoir in collecting insects and tossing them together in tanks to see who lives. I began to feel that I was reading the Diary of a Madman, and hurried through these anecdotes.
The abilities of these various animals to kill and their instincts to murder--for food or fun--were fascinating, as were Grice's parallels to us as human predators.

The Red Hourglass - Lives Of The Predators

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The Red Hourglass - Lives Of The Predators
Gordon Grice
Manufacturer: Delacorte Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000RIP1TU

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The Red Hourglass : lives of The Predators
Gordon Grice
Manufacturer: Allen Lane/The Penguin Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000M4SOXO

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THE RED HOURGLASS: LIVES OF THE PREDATORS.
Gordon. Grice
Manufacturer: Penguin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000O9ERLU

Incarnations of Immortality Series: On a Pale Horse, Bearing an Hourglass, With a Tangled Skein, Wielding a Red Sword, Being a Green Mother, For Love of Evil, And Eternity (Set of 7)

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Incarnations of Immortality Series: On a Pale Horse, Bearing an Hourglass, With a Tangled Skein, Wielding a Red Sword, Being a Green Mother, For Love of Evil, And Eternity (Set of 7)
Piers Anthony
Manufacturer: Del Rey
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000NKB61Y

7 Titles By Incarnations of Immortality - On a Pale Horse - Bearing an Hourglass - With a Tangled Skein - Wielding a Red Sword - Being a Green Mother - For Love of Evil - And Eternity

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7 Titles By Incarnations of Immortality - On a Pale Horse - Bearing an Hourglass - With a Tangled Skein - Wielding a Red Sword - Being a Green Mother - For Love of Evil - And Eternity
Piers Anthony
Manufacturer: various
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

General | Fantasy | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books

Product Description

7 massmarket paperback Titles By Incarnations of Immortality - On a Pale Horse - Bearing an Hourglass - With a Tangled Skein - Wielding a Red Sword - Being a Green Mother - For Love of Evil - And Eternity

On a Pale Horse; Bearing an Hourglass; With a Tangled Skein; Wielding a Red Sword; Being a Green Mother; For Love of Evil (Incarnations of Immortality, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

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On a Pale Horse; Bearing an Hourglass; With a Tangled Skein; Wielding a Red Sword; Being a Green Mother; For Love of Evil (Incarnations of Immortality, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
Piers Anthony
Manufacturer: DelRey
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000WFFXIC

Product Description

The first 6 books in the Incarnations of Immortality, a seven-book fantasy series by Piers Anthony. The books are each focused upon one of seven supernatural "offices" (Death, Time, Fate, War, Nature, Evil and Good) in a fictional reality and history parallel to ours, with the exception that society has advanced both magic and modern technology. The series covers the adventures and struggles of a group of humans, called "Incarnations", who hold these supernatural positions for a certain time.

Book Description

Colour photos highlight the sheer spectacle of Formula One ^TM

Get to know what Formula One racing is all about

This book delves into the strategy, technology, and spirit needed to win a Formula One race. Every angle of a race weekend is covered in detail, from scrutineering to pitstops to podium. You’ll also read about the rivalries and politics that have turned the sport into a global televised drama. Illustrated with colour photographs, Formula One Racing For Dummies will serve the die-hard spectator or armchair fan alike.

Discover how to:

Identify race strategies
Understand the role of each team member
Master the latest rules and regulations
Appreciate a Formula One car’s cutting-edge design
Enjoy Formula One from the stands and on TV

The Dummies Way

Explanations in plain English
"Get in, get out" information
Icons and other navigational aids
Tear-out cheat sheet
Top ten lists
A dash of humour and fun

Download Description

"Colour photos highlight the sheer spectacle of Formula One ^TM

Get to know what Formula One racing is all about

Discover how to:

Identify race strategies
Understand the role of each team member
Master the latest rules and regulations
Appreciate a Formula One car’s cutting-edge design
Enjoy Formula One from the stands and on TV

The Dummies Way

Explanations in plain English
""Get in, get out"" information
Icons and other navigational aids
Tear-out cheat sheet
Top ten lists
A dash of humour and fun

Customer Reviews:

Good for the Formula 1 Challenged.......2006-12-24

This is actually not a bad book. If you don't know much about Formula 1, this book will inform you. Very informative yet simple and easy reading.

Customer Reviews:

A USEFUL REFRENCE BOOK.......2007-08-26

I've been studying Japanese language for five years already, and I've learned that there's neither an easy method nor a method for everyone. To me, mnemonics are the best, and this book is the second best supplement I've found to my own learning idiosyncrasies. I owned a copy when I lived in Japan, and now that I'm back in my country I ordered another as a companion to James W. Heisig's Remembering The Kanji. I use Heisig's book a lot more though, because it has an arrangement that's particularly helpful to learn kanji by association, something Kanji&Kana doesn't have. On the other hand, all the introductory chapters about the history of kanji in Japan and the developement of the kana syllabaries are concise and informative, and the Jinmei-yo kanji section really helps to read names, something particularly tricky to foreigners. All in all, this book alone won't give you a method, but it's an excellent back up, and gives you a lot for the money. I wouldn't suggest it for beginners, but who knows.

A great book to start learning Kanji with.......2006-11-10

I originally picked this book up in a bookstore with the intention of learning a few random kanji so I could practice writing; I basically thought kanji were just really cool to look at. However, not long after that, I came to the conclusion that it would really be more useful to learn what the characters actually meant. So, with no prior knowledge of Japanese, I began to study kanji, meaning, pronunciation and stroke order, and this book proved to be a great tool. In the introductory pages, a brief history of the development of the Japanese writing system is given, along with a stroke order explanation, hiragana/katakana tables, and examples of Japanese punctuation marks.

The main body consists of the standard 1,945 Jouyou-kanji and 285 Jinmeiyou-kanji. For each Jouyou-kanji, the stroke order, pronunciation, meanings and up to five compound words are given. You can look up kanji through pronunciation, stroke order, or radical system. Although there are officially 214 radicals in Japanese, this book reduces the number to 79 by the reasoning that the remaining radicals aren't so common.

I learned 200-300 kanji with this book, and then picked the Kodansha Kanji Learner Dictionary, which is also good, for a good price. However, I prefer the character order in Kanji and Kana to the learner dictionary. In fact when studying from the learner dictionary, I still referred to and followed the order as listed in Kanji & Kana. I believe one of the reviews for this book says that there is no logical order to the characters, and that he prefers the order as learned in Japan. I don't think the order is illogical; in the first several pages, you will learn the kanji for person, sun/Japan, the elements, numbers, directions, etc. Throughout the book, in most cases the subsequent kanji is related to the previous either in pronunciation, a shared radical, or theme/meaning. A non-native speaker of Japanese shouldn't be expected to learn the same way as Japanese children do. Not only can they speak before they learn to read, but they will continue to learn for the next several years up through high-school.

I really can't think of many complaints about this book. Perhaps that there aren't enough compounds given for each character. But owning a Japanese dictionary or another kanji dictionary should fulfill that purpose.

I have been studying kanji for a few years now, and I still refer to this book. It is great not only for the beginner to start learning, but also for the advanced learner who needs to review. The price is great, too; you should be able to pick it up for ten dollars or less.

Very handy kanji reference.......2006-09-19

It is true this book is more for beginners. But as such, I found it to be the best tool for learning all the common kanji. Yes, there are other more exhaustive references, but it is a LOT harder to find the kanji you are looking for in those books. I have Nelson's character dictionary with about 5000 kanji and I hardly use it.

Kanji & Kana has plenty of examples, 4-5 for each character, but the main characters are used many other times subsequently in compounds with other kanji characters. So, for example, there may be 4 examples using the character for PERSON, but many other more advanced kanji also form compound words with PERSON, so you will find additional examples throughout the book. Both ON (Chinese) and KUN (Japanese) readings are given. The characters are ordered so that the most commonly used ones appear first, so that compound words you encounter later always reference only characters that have already been covered. This ordering may bother some who like to look up characters by radicals. Never fear, you have 3 indices in the back to look up characters based on reading, or radicals, or stroke count. Very handy.

This was my only Kanji dictionary while I studied Japanese for 2 years in college, and it is still my favorite.

It's Great.......2006-02-02

I Bought this 4 book my husband I got on 1/30/06 and he has read more then half of it and it's great it tells him everything he needs... but he would also subjest getting a Japanese to English English to Japanese dictionary to go with along with sentence structure, grammer, and Particles. so you can learn it all and go back and forth (well for him learning is better that way) depending on how you learn... and he's beginner and he's learning alot!!!! soon he should be able to construct sentences

Excellent Beginner's Learning Tool.......2005-06-27

This book includes the entire Jouyou Kanji list (1,945 characters), as well as complete hiragana and katakana, all of which are required to be considered literate in Japanese. This alone makes the book an excellent learning tool for any beginner ready to tackle the written language. Each kanji symbol is followed with romanized readings, as well as several common compound words it may be found in. Every symbol even provides stroke order, to aid in proper writing techniques.

The book pushes beyond the basics, however, also including a list of nearly 300 kanji that can be found in names. The first section of the book provides comprehensive reading for any level student, featuring history, styles, rules, punctuation, and more, for the written language. The indexes in the back give the learner three methods of searching for kanji: by radical, by stroke count, or by reading.

While this book will not provide the reader with a complete list of the thousands of kanji that exist, it is an excellent tool with which to start at the basics and help you work your way towards fluency.

Kanji and Kana: A Handbook and Dictionary of the Japanese Writing System

Average customer rating:

an invaluable textbook for a student of japanese writing.

Kanji and Kana: A Handbook and Dictionary of the Japanese Writing System
Wolfgang Hadamitzky , and Mark Spahn
Manufacturer: Tuttle Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

English (All) | Dictionaries & Thesauruses | Reference | Subjects | Books

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books

General | Writing | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0804813736

Customer Reviews:

an invaluable textbook for a student of japanese writing........2005-05-02

An ideal learning aid for the mastery of japanese. In a pioneering way it brings together into a coherent whole a great deal of information which,until now, one would have to had searched through a dozen textbooks to find.I glady recommend this book to any student of japanese.This textbook was of great resource for me and is one of the lesser know books for japanese.Once you pick it up however, you will surely find that nearly every question that first arises about japanese will be fully answered in the most clear and spefic way possible.All in all,the work is rich in information and makes a fine introduction to the japanese writing system. It will prove an indispensible aid to the beginner.

Kanji & Kana : A Handbook of the Japanese Writing System, Revised Edition

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Kanji & Kana : A Handbook of the Japanese Writing System, Revised Edition
Wolfgang; Spahn, Mark Hadamitzky
Manufacturer: Charles E. Tuttle
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000NWAFX2

Kanji and Kana: A Handbook of the Japanese Writing System

Average customer rating:

Kanji and Kana: A Handbook of the Japanese Writing System
Wolfgang Hadamitzky
Manufacturer: CHARLES E TUTTLE COMPANY INC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000WTTHNA

Book Description

Gadgets galore! Everything from cameras that collapse to keyboards that curl. Murphy beds, folding scooters, portable showers they're all here. The first ever of its kind, Collapsible is a comprehensive survey of all that breaks down, balls up, pulls apart, and stacks together.

Why collapse? Internationally renowned Danish designer Per Mollerup answers with every imaginable example from the past and present. The inclusion of a Swiss army knife shouldn't come as a surprise, but what about a retractable bulletproof vest, circa 1918? With over 530 illustrations, this book is a must-have for design aficionados and anyone who has an affinity for clever product design. Collapsible is both an ode to ingenuity and an album for inspiration!

Customer Reviews:

A Great Resource.......2002-01-11

Per Mollerup has gathered some wonderful examples of utility and whimsy from around the world, and used those examples to illustrate "The Genius of Space Saving Design".

As an Industrtial Designer and Manufacturer, I loved this book as a way to recharge the creative side, reinforce the practical side, and marvel at the imagination and inspiration of other designers.

As a bonus, it was a great way to help my elementary school aged daughters understand the connection between design and products that they see every day.

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