Mosquito : A Natural History of Our Most Persistent and Deadly Foe - Softcover

This book is a collaboration between a journalist and scientist. The stories and anecdotes are told in first-person singular experiences recounted from the writer's career and travels around the world. The writer hopes these stories, and this book in its entirety, will lead you to respect and, perhaps, admire the mosquito as something more than just a pest or a vector of disease. Few creatures on earth are more worthy of scientific inquiry and human wonder. In this lively and comprehensive portrait of the mosquito, its role in history, and its threat to mankind, Spielman and D'Antonio take a mosquito's-eye view of nature and man. They show us how mosquitoes breed, live, mate, and die, and introduce us to their enemies, both natural and man-made. The authors present tragic and often grotesque examples of how the mosquito has insinuated itself into human history, from the malaria that devastated invaders of ancient Rome to the current widespread West Nile fever panic. Filled with little-known facts and remarkable anecdotes that bring this tiny being into larger focus, Mosquito offers fascinating, alarming, and convincing evidence that the sooner we get to know this pesky insect, the better off we'll be.