Rainbow Dust: Three Centuries of Butterfly Delight - Hardcover

"An elegantly written and superbly researched account of how the human bond with butterflies has changed over centuries."--Patrick Barkham "Guardian, Best Books of 2015 "

"A subtly brilliant cultural and scientific history of lepidoptery, interspersed with vignettes from Marren's own life in the field."--Barbara Kiser "Nature "

"Rainbow Dust is Marren's love letter to the butterfly. . . . His passion is infectious. Beautifully written and thoroughly researched, Rainbow Dust is a truly marvelous book."--Sophia Waugh "Telegraph "

"Marren's Rainbow Dust, a captivating cultural life of . . . butterflies, is crammed with such fascinating stories. The real reason for those bright colors? One scientist chewed on this for years--literally."--Martin Jones "Guardian, Readers' Books of the Year 2015 "

"To and fro, the book flitty-floats, elegantly, intentionally, like a butterfly between blooms. . . . He's a genial, entertaining guide, is Peter Marren. . . . Butterflies have found their champion. Is Rainbow Dust worth a flutter? Oh, absolutely."--John Lewis-Stempel "Times "

"Reveal[s] the fascinating world of these winged jewels."--Stephen Moss "Guardian, Best Nature Books of 2015 "

"[Rainbow Dust] is the distilled essence from a lifetime's reading, looking, and taking pleasure in butterflies."--Mark Cocker "Guardian "

"[A] superbly distilled statement on our . . . obsession with butterflies. . . . Marren is insightful on all this psychology, but he is equally adept at exploring our scientific investigations of butterflies. . . . What is most fascinating about Marren's history of butterfly science is the range of personalities that were devoted to collecting them."--Mark Cocker "Spectator "

"Marren's Rainbow Dust is a history of butterflies in Great Britain. By this we mean, of course, a history of humans and butterflies. (What is with all these Brits writing about nature? There's a strong elegiac tone in these works, as well as celebration, as well as inspiration to do god-damned better, mates!)"--Backyard and Beyond

"As charming and colorful as its winged subjects."--Financial Times

Like fluttering shards of stained glass, butterflies possess a unique power to pierce and stir the human soul. Indeed, the ancient Greeks explicitly equated the two in a single word,psyche, so that from early times butterflies were not only a form of life, but also an idea. Profound and deeply personal, written with both wisdom and wit, Peter Marren’sRainbow Dust explores this idea of butterflies—the why behind the mysterious power of these insects we do not flee, but rather chase.

At the age of five, Marren had his “Nabokov Moment,” catching his first butterfly and feeling the dust of its colored scales between his fingers. It was a moment that would launch a lifetime’s fascination rivaling that of the famed novelist—a fascination that put both in good company. From the butterfly collecting and rearing craze that consumed North America and Europe for more than two hundred years (a hobby that in some cases bordered on madness), to the potent allure of butterfly iconography in contemporary advertisements and their use in spearheading calls to conserve and restore habitat (even though butterflies are essentially economically worthless), Marren unveils the many ways in which butterflies inspire us as objects of beauty and as symbols both transient and transcendent.

Floating around the globe and through the whole gamut of human thought, from art and literature to religion and science,Rainbow Dust is a cultural history rather than merely a natural one, a tribute to butterflies’ power to surprise, entertain, and obsess us. With a sway that far surpasses their fragile anatomy and gentle beat, butterfly wings draw us into the prismatic wonders of the natural world—and, in the words of Peter Marren, these wonders take flight.