Grasshopper Dreaming Reflections on Killing and Loving

Grasshopper Dreaming is a collection of first-person musings about the ethical and philosophical implications of the author's work as an entomologist who specializes in grasshoppers and pest control. Lockwood deftly explores the moral implications of his work and speculates on about the actual relationship between "pests" and humanity if we consider all living creatures to have value in and of themselves, regardless of their usefulness or inconvenience for us. The author, self-described as "a hired assassin for agriculture," offers readers a rich account of the sometimes painful, often odd, occasionally funny, and invariably complex realizations that come out of balancing a religious perspective with the practices of modern science and technology. Based on fifteen years of work, the essays in this book represent the rare and compelling integration of understanding of nature with the perspective of a world-class ecologist and struggling mystic.

User Ratings and Reviews

2 Stars not what I wanted
I was looking for detailed stories about grasshopper ecology, not someone pontificating on the state of the world. The chapter about finding the lost migratory grasshopper was the best. Grasshoppers have fascinating behavior, and the author might have spent more time showing his love of grasshoppers by sharing some of what he has discovered.

5 Stars A polished gem
The subject categories on the copyright page, "1. Grasshoppers 2. Grasshoppers -- Ecology 3. Insect pests -- Control -- Environmental aspects," may lead to serendipity for some entomologists, but there needs to be more of a clue for the rest of us. This is a book about ecology more than grasshoppers, living in the world more than pest control. The author's deep understanding and experience in killing grasshoppers is what caused and organizes the book, but not what it's about.

It is a thoughtful treatise on our place on this earth, on the reality of the universe and on the irony and paradox (as Lockwood puts it) of the impossibility of victory in the battle between scientific materialism and religious understanding.

5 Stars Loving them singly, killing them by the billion
He loves the grasshoppers, but he kills the grasshoppers. That, in a nutshell, is the theme of this remarkable collection of essays about "loving and killing."

Several essays stand out. In one, he discusses watching the death throes of the grasshoppers in the field after they have been sprayed by his products. As always, it is the details that strike home - - Lockwood gets upset when a colleague crushes a nymph with his boot just before the spraying would have killed the nymph and millions more.

A second memorable essay concerns Lockwood's family. His father was a nuclear physicist who worked on atomic bombs, and Lockwood reflects on the similarities between their two careers. Lockwood also discusses his efforts to get his children to understand "applied ecology," that is, the science of killing insects. Of course, each child asks a deep and devastating question.

The essay on religion that concludes the book doesn't quite work. Lockwood is writing while still in the middle of his spiritual journey, and his views aren't yet settled enough to commit to writing. I also think that Lockwood's own voice is grounded so deeply in grasshoppers that it's a mistake to write on things too far removed. Elsewhere in the book he asks us to remember the grasshoppers that died for us when we give thanks before a meal. This kind of grasshopper-based religiosity lies at the heart of Lockwood's own genius.

The book begins with a fish that doesn't quite die, and ends with a fish that does. Even though it's a book about grasshoppers, that works.

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