The hardback edition of this book was the first on insect flight since J W S Pringle's classic Insect Flight was published in 1957. Since then, much has been written on the ecological aspects of flight, but the question of the origin of wings and flight, their structural concomitants, and related aerodynamical issues have been confined to armchair speculation in a scattered literature. The book draws a coherent, empirically based picture of how insect flight may have evolved.