Gordon Gordh and David H. Headrick
CABI Publishing, New York, NY 2001
1032 pp., $140.00
ISBN 0-85199-291-9 (cloth)

A Dictionary of Entomology is the most complete reference of its kind available today. Entomology dictionaries and glossaries have been published in various languages. But few can boast having a complete coverage of entomological subdisciplines. Thomson’s English/Spanish Illustrated Agricultural Dictionary (by Robert P. Rice, Jr.) is a good example. It may be of some use to agricultural entomologists, but it is no more than a list of translated words. The most important entomological dictionary of the 20th Century, with its periodical revisions, was Jose Torre-Bueno’s A Glossary of Entomology, originally published in 1937; last published in 1989. In 1989, Stephen Nichols and Randall Schuh published the last update to this work called The Torre-Bueno Glossary of Entomology (which is currently out of print).

More than 1,000 pages in length and providing over 43,000 definitions, Gordon Gordh and David H. Headrick’s A Dictionary of Entomology offers to be the most complete entomological dictionary ever published. It boldly and successfully covers all of the many subdisciplines of entomology: pest management, anatomy and physiology, behavior, ecology, taxonomy and systematics, and molecular biology. The definitions are detailed, some almost encyclopedic in their treatment. Included in the description of terms are the etymology and part of speech as well as cross-references to other relevant terms found in the dictionary. All taxonomic categories, from orders to species are included with a thorough listing of all relevant subtaxa (e.g., for an order, a list of its families is given). For each taxon, morphological, physiological, and natural history descriptions are provided. In addition to definition of terms, biographical sketches of important entomologists also are described, which include date and place of birth, specialty, connections to other entomologists, notable publications and years of publications, as well as additional references from where biographical sketches were obtained.

The appendix contains two types of references: (1) Journal titles that are abbreviated in the text. (These are actually 75% of the ones that are in the text and represent those journal titles that do not clearly match the abbreviations). (2) Common names are taken from specific authors, and their references are listed in the second section of the appendix.

What is most impressive about this reference is how the authors have managed to cover all subfields of entomology and the chronological breadth of this coverage. This makes A Dictionary of Entomology a valuable reference not only for entomologists who specialize in a particular area but also for practitioners of other scientific fields. It also is of interest to readers curious about the history of entomology as well as more contemporary issues such as the trade names of pesticides and molecular genetics. This is an extraordinary work of the highest scholarship, and this reviewer cannot find any reasonable fault with it. Its price would be the only drawback, but its purchase would definitely be money well spent.

Abelardo C. Moncayo, Ph.D.
Center for Tropical Diseases
Department of Pathology
University of Texas Medical Branch
E-mail: acmoncay@utmb.edu
American Entomologist
Vol. 47, No.3, Fall 2001