What prompts obsessive collectors to catalog their finds? Why do some people devote themselves to the study of bugs? And what's so important about the hoverfly, anyway? As confounded by his unusual vocation as anyone, entomologist Fredrik Sjöberg reflects here on a range of ideas—art, lost loves, the passage of time—drawing on sources as disparate as D.H. Lawrence and the forgotten naturalist René Edmond Malaise. From Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula to the Swedish isle he calls home, Sjöberg revels in the wonders of the natural world while sharing memorable images and stories. A bestseller in its native country—and selected as a Nature Book of the Year by The Times of London—this humorous, contemplative 2004 memoir is a meditation on the beauty of small things and an exploration of the history of entomology itself.