About the Author

Gordon Grice's writing about the black widow spider has appeared in High Plains Literary Review and Harper's. It has been anthologized in Houghton Mifflin's Best American Essays 1996 and in college readers. Grice teaches humanities and English at Seward County Community College in Liberal, Kansas. He lives in rural Oklahoma with his wife and their three-year-old son.

Reviews

"Gordon Grice is one hell of a writer. I was originally disturbed by some of the killing he depicts, but his descriptions are so compelling that I had to read on. I'm glad I did."
--Jeffrey Masson, author of When Elephants Weep and Dogs Never Lie About Love

"The Red Hourglass marks the debut of a fresh, strange, and wonderful new voice in American nature writing."
--Michael Pollan, author of A Place of My Own and Second Nature

Large predators inspire awe and respect; smaller predators, like spiders and snakes, inspire revulsion. This collection of seven essays examines several smaller predators, including black widows ("the red hourglass"), tarantulas, mantids, brown recluse spiders, and rattlesnakes. Grice is not overly sentimental; he raises black widows and is quite fond of them, but his rattlesnakes are personifications of pure evil. Two essays about larger predators, the pig and the "canid," are as much about humans as about the predators of the title. Grice's essays are personal and graphic, with all of the morbid fascination of a train wreck, and although the natural history is good, this collection is more valuable for its literary than its scientific merit. (Grice teaches English at Seward Community College in Kansas.) Recommended for both academic and public libraries.‘Bruce D. Neville, Univ. of New Mexico Lib., Albuquerque

"Gordon Grice is one hell of a writer. I was originally disturbed by some of the killing he depicts, but his descriptions are so compelling that I had to read on. I'm glad I did."
--Jeffrey Masson, author of When Elephants Weep and Dogs Never Lie About Love

"The Red Hourglass marks the debut of a fresh, strange, and wonderful new voice in American nature writing."
--Michael Pollan, author of A Place of My Own and Second Nature