THE DEADLIEST

A rogue’s gallery of venomous spiders.

Claiming that her six profiles are “for fang fans only,” Spicer Rice in fact also offers broad views of the roles spiders play in food chains and ecosystems in general. She presents a sort of arachnid reality show that gives readers opportunities to pick the deadliest candidate and to come away appreciating the eight-legged horrors for their place in nature. “We have them! We need them! Let’s love them!” she proposes in her frothy narrative. She notes that widow spiders come in white, red, and blue as well as black (and recluses come in shades other than brown), observes that Australian funnel-web spiders like to hide out in enclosed spaces such as shoes, and, with particular relish, details the painful, if seldom fatal, symptoms of being bitten by each of the contestants. Along with cartoon depictions of sick or terrified human victims of diverse hue, Temescu tucks in lots of close-up views of spiders, both anthropomorphic and anatomically correct, from spinnerets to “Fangs! Fangs!” All six are melodramatically posed along a “Death-O-Meter” at the end, next to a revelation that while almost no one dies from spider bites today, air pollution takes a far more lethal toll globally; even video games are deadlier.

Terrifyingly informative.