This book shows some of the best architectural illustrators in the world. It is a must for architects, illustrators and anyone interested in the art of architectural illustration.

i thought this was a wonderfull book it will help me greatly in times to come. i also loved the descriotive nature of this book.

I must say this is a pretty cool book although not for the squeamish. Graphic full color photographs that read like crime scene photographs or stills from a horror movie.

There's the sexy display between two praying mantis before the male becomes a post-coitus snack. Another praying mantis dances merrily on the head of a fat shiny toad before meeting its inevitable end. Caterpillars greedily gorge themselves on tomatoes only to be sucked dry by more ever present praying mantis.

The most graphic scenes though are the ones with the pinkies. Pinkies being born amongst a white blood smeared backdrop only to be gobbled up by another fat toad.

It's sick to look at and even a bit morbid at times, but it's Mother Nature and a testament to the circle of life and the survival of the fittest.

Truly fascinating but not for those with weak stomachs.

The book consists of excellent photographs of various critters (bugs, frogs, spiders, mice, snakes, etc.) eating or being eaten by others. Not for the squeamish.

The more prudish reader might also be disgusted by the scenes of hot, steamy preying mantis sex.

For those with the stomach for it, the material presented in this work provides a fascinating and detailed view of a small part of the world we live in.

Fantastic. Brilliant. Phenomena and Occasionally Revolting. I want more.

"Life is Hard and Then You Die," I saw this bumper sticker on the rear of a car about the same time I got "FoodChain." I felt that this would be a great subtitle for this provocative book. The photography is stunning and Aperture, one of the leading publishers of fine art photography, has done a dazzling job in portraying the moments between life and death. Catherine Chalmers has given the layperson insight into the world that we live in but seldom see. Her progressive plates vividly take you from birth to death and then back again to birth. Caterpillar eats tomato, praying mantis eats caterpillar, tarantula and a frog eat praying mantis, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

If you thought sex was fatal because of the roulette of disease in our world today, consider the bazaar appreciation that a male praying mantis gets from his lover. Chalmers captures the strange "thank you" the female gives by devouring the male-head first. This book is a collectible and should be in your hands and library. Highly Recommended

I picked up this book (its still on the shelves) because the author gave a really bad review to a book I really liked and I thought his book must then be lousy. Actually the Red Hour Glass is a great book-- it's slightly on the creepy side of riveting nature writing but Grice seems to deserve his accolades-- his absorption in the micro-world is incredible. However, the sensitivities of his book seem incongruous with his referring to the science topics in the recent Nabokov's Blues (Zoland Books) "trivial" and uncompelling. That is beyond me since they involved endangered species and questions of the origins of entire continents of animals and plants. Perhaps these larger issues are not his favorites or he was grinding some axe against those authors. Doesn't make sense; the Red Hour Glass is a good book but the book about Nabokov couldn't have been written in the same way-- its a different kind of topic. Well, read both and you'll probably find both compelling. "Trivial" endangered species are not, nor is working on these plants and animals before they go extinct.

Grice portrays the predators of people in an enlightening and interesting way. I was so mesmerized by his experiences with such predators as the black widow, the pig, the tarantula, that I could not put the book down. The Red Hourglass was very well written, it provided factual information as witnessed by the author himself. It was so incredibly written, presenting the information not as a fact list, or text book style in leaving out description and emotion, but as a true literary masterpiece. I enjoyed this book immensly and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in nature, predation or wildlife biology.

What the reader gets with this book are seven essays written by a literary/humanities based college professor on seven particular predators: the black widow, the praying mantis, rattlesnakes, tarantulas, pigs, dogs, and the brown recluse spider. The writing is surpisingly good and the subject matter, while somewhat dark and gory, is fascinating.

The reader from Michigan calls this book 'backyard naturalism' in a derogatory manner. I am a biology major and, although the majority of Grice's claims appear consistent with similar data I have seen, this is not a hard science book; criticizing it in that context is an apples verses oranges category mistake. Conversely, I praise this work as 'backyard naturalism' at its best. I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Red Hourglass from front to back. Take a bit of Peter Matthiessen's literary organicism, a pinch of Steven King's macabre involvment, E. O. Wilson's entomology, a dash of Desiderius Erasmus' sad, pragmatic humor, and some of Montaigne's candor, and you can wile away sumptuous moments zoosynthesizing the adventure of the 'The Incredible Shrinking Man' crossed with a bored boy's deific experimentation with arthropods, among other animals; all written with starkness and skill. What's a long pig? one may ask. The very sight of egregious brown recluse bites makes me kiss the soil of northern California.

This book is a good mix of the literary and scientific milieus. It draws one in by the curiousity and repulsion of the subject matter as ruse for the author's peculiar expository skill.

All though not THE best book on architectural illustrations, it does contain a nice mixture of drawings done in different mediums and styles. Each page contains anywhere from one to three images. The awards section in the beginning lists the size and medium used for the illustration...the last half of the book, titled designated entries, however, does not (a small dissapointment there). It is well worth the money I paid for it. Overall, it is a good viewing book, and I hope to add a few more from the series to my collection.

This book is a chance to emplore many ways of representing architecture in two dimensions and to enlarge all the qualities fo design for the clients to understand the project in a better way. Perspectives, elevations, plans and sections are shown in very different ways of using color, markers, water color and even some computer technics. It is very important to always have books like this in your own library as an architect.