The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators

Jacket Description/Flap: 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. Review Quotes: "Gordon Grice is one hell of a writer. I was originally disturbed by some of the killing he depicts, but his descriptions are so compelling that I had to read on. I'm glad I did."--Jeffrey Masson, author of "When Elephants Weep" and "Dogs Never Lie About Love"""The Red Hourglass" marks the debut of a fresh, strange, and wonderful new voice in American nature writing."--Michael Pollan, author of "A Place of My Own" and "Second Nature""From the Hardcover edition."Biographical Note: Gordon Grice's writing about the black widow spider has appeared in "High Plains Literary Review" and "Harper's." It has been anthologized in "Houghton Mifflin's Best American Essays 1996" and in college readers. Grice teaches humanities and English at Seward County Community College in Liberal, Kansas. He lives in rural Oklahoma with his wife and their three-year-old son. "From the Hardcover edition."Publisher Marketing: 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. 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. Publisher Marketing: 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." Review Citations:

New York Times 04/11/1999 pg. 40 (EAN 9780385318907, Paperback)

Wilson Senior High Core Col 01/01/2002 pg. 198 (EAN 9780385318907, Paperback)

Wilson Senior High Core Col 01/01/2007 pg. 252 (EAN 9780385318907, Paperback)

Wilson Senior High Core Col 01/01/2011 pg. 322 (EAN 9780385318907, Paperback)

Publishers Weekly 02/16/1998 pg. 194 (EAN 9780385318877, Hardcover)

Kirkus Reviews 02/01/1998 pg. 170 (EAN 9780385318877, Hardcover)

Library Journal 03/01/1998 pg. 117 (EAN 9780385318877, Hardcover)

Booklist 04/15/1998 pg. 1404 (EAN 9780385318877, Hardcover)

Wilson Senior High Core Col 01/01/1999 pg. 29 (EAN 9780385318877, Hardcover)

Contributor Bio:  Grice, Gordon Gordon Grice is a nature writer and author of "The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators and Deadly Kingdom: The Book of Dangerous Animals". His articles about wildlife and biology have appeared in "The New Yorker", "Harper s", and "Discover". He lives in Wisconsin and online at gordongrice.com.