An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles: Campfire Conversations with Alfred Russell Wallace

An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles follows the Victorian-era
explorations of Alfred Russel Wallace through Indonesia, Singapore and
Malaysia. While Wallace is recognized as co-discoverer of the theory of
natural selection (and was perhaps deliberately sidelined by Darwin) he
was also an edgy social commentator and a voracious collector of
"natural productions". Sochaczewski, author of Sultan and the Mermaid
Queen and co-author of Soul of the Tiger, has created an innovative form
of storytelling - combining incisive biography and personal travelogue.
He examines themes about which Wallace cared deeply -- women's power,
why boys leave home, the need to collect, our relationship with other
species, humanity's need to control nature and how this leads to nature
destruction, arrogance, the role of ego and greed, white-brown and
brown-brown colonialism, serendipity, passion, mysticism -- and
interprets them through his own filter with layers of humor, history,
social commentary and sometimes-outrageous personal tales.