Published: May 10, 2025; Aithor: Julia Sonrisa
Address: 743 Church Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11218, United States
Phone: +1 347-240-3816
Web: https://www.loftypigeonbooks.com/Join Eisner Award—winning author and illustrator Peter Kuper for the launch of Insectopolis, an incredible visual account of the 400-million-year history of insects and the remarkable entomologists who have studied them.
Peter will present from Insectopolis, followed by a conversation with ecologist Mark Moffett, a book signing, and a reception.
Preorder your copy of Insectopolis here!
This visually immersive work of graphic nonfiction dives into a world where ants, cicadas, bees, and butterflies visit a library exhibition that displays their stories and humanity’s connection to them throughout the ages. Kuper’s thrilling visual feast layers history and science, color and design, to tell the remarkable tales of dung beetles navigating by the stars, hawk-size prehistoric dragonflies hunting pre,y and mosquitoes changing the course of human history.
Kuper also illuminates pioneering naturalists, from well-known figures like E. O. Wilson and Rachel Carson to unheralded luminaries like Charles Henry Turner, the Black American scholar who documented arthropod intelligence, and Maria Sibylla Merian, the seventeenth-century German regarded as the mother of entomology.
Galvanised by the sixth extinction and the ongoing insect crisis, Kuper takes readers on an unforgettable journey. Advance Praise for Insectopolis
“If insects weren’t everywhere on Earth, you and I wouldn’t be here either (on Earth). What about the other way round? What if we weren’t here, but insects were, and these insects could read? In a library? It would be Insectopolis. That’s a future Peter Kuper imagines and illustrates for us in exquisite detail. Take all the time you need. There are millions of years to review and quintillions of these creatures to consider.” — Bill Nye, science educator
“Peter Kuper’s stunning Insectopolis takes readers on a journey, traveling through time and space in the company of Earth’s most underappreciated beings. Each page is lush with closely observed detail: the iridescence of a beetle’s exoskeleton, the velvety wing of a moth, the shadow cast by a single ant. Visually dazzling and rich with information, it is a book that will change the way you see the world and the trillions of tiny creatures scuttling and buzzing all around us.” — Lauren Redniss, author of Oak Flat and Radioactive
“It’s generous of the insects to share their planet with us, and that’s never been more powerfully (and charmingly) illustrated than by Peter Kuper. This book will reorient your understanding of humanity’s place on earth.” — Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature
“Stunningly beautiful and hugely informative, Insectopolis is a perfect example of the importance of merging the sciences and arts. What an achievement!” — Andrea Wulf, author of Magnificent Rebels and The Invention of Nature
“Insectopolis is wildly inventive and, at the same time, deeply informative. Every page is full of surprises.” — Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction and Under a White Sky
Peter Kuper is the Eisner Award—winning author of Ruins and critically acclaimed adaptations of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, The Nation, and Charlie Hebdo. He co-founded the political anthology World War 3 Illustrated and has been writing and drawing Mad magazine’s Spy vs. Spy since 1997. Kuper has exhibited and lectured worldwide and teaches Harvard University’s first class dedicated to graphic novels and comics.
Mark Moffett is an ecologist and explorer who has been called the Indiana Jones of entomology. He is a biologist who studies the ecology of tropical forest canopies and the social behavior of animals and humans.
Time: 6:30-8:00 pm EST
Free!
Detailed information and discussion of the event.