By Bert Holldobler, Edward O. Wilson

ISBN 0674040759 | Published 1990 | Hardcover | 736 pp black/white and color illus

The ant book to end all ant books. This book reviews, in exhaustive detail, virtually all topics in the anatomy, physiology, social organization, ecology and natural history of ants. This book illustrates each of the 292 living genera of ants — there are approximately 8,800 known species — and provides detailed taxonomic keys to ants, region by region around the world. They tell the story of the evolution of ants from their origins more than a hundred million years ago and explore every aspect of ant social life. In large format, with almost a thousand line drawings, photographs and paintings, it is one of the most visually rich and all-encompassing views of any group of organisms on earth. In addition to winning the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction, this book has received overwhelming critical praise.

“This magnificent and long-awaited volume is the definitive work on [ants]...Every imaginable area of interest to a biologist, a sociologist, even a curious citizen, is covered...At once remarkably exhaustive and parsimonious, the book does not stint on exhaustive detail wherever such detail is required.” - William Brown, Scientific American