Rating: 
Summary: The Deadliest Insect of Them All
Review: Mosquitoes are perhaps the most dangerous of all insects. Somewhere around 2 million people die each year from mosquito-vectored human malaria alone- many more than are killed in traffic accidents (source: WHO.) Andrew Spielman and Michael D'Antonio have now produced a book that documents the life history of and human association with these tiny vampires and they have generally done a very good job. If you want to know some fascinating facts about mosquitoes, this is a good source.Unfortunately the maps of the distributions of both mosquitoes and the diseases they carry are somewhat out of date. Aedes aegypti is now in Tucson, Las Cruces, and El Paso in the Southwest U.S., and West Nile is in almost every state. Also the information about the vectors of West Nile Virus is an oversimplification. In the western US at least, Culex tarsalis my be a more efficient vector than C. pipiens. Despite these minor flaws, I highly recommend this book. It is one of the best general work on the subject since J. D. Gillett's book "The Mosquito." Unfortunately both are now out of print.
Rating:
Summary: damned pests
Review: Prison life brings home to a man how nature carries on its quiet, care-free life quite unconcerned, and makes one feel almost sentimental towards animal and plant life--except for flies; I can't work up any sentiment about them! -Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Prisoner for God : Letters and Papers from Prison If I were to say to you that this book tells you everything you need to know about mosquitoes, your initial reaction, like mine, would likely be that you already know too much : they are damned annoying pests. But Andrew Spielman, a Harvard professor, and his coauthor, Michael D'Antonio, have produced a concise and very interesting volume about the mosquito that is well worth reading. The secret of their success lies in the fact that though Professor Spielman obviously feels that the mosquito is fascinating in its own right, the book focusses more on the deadly interaction between the bugs, the various diseases they transmit, and humankind. At a time when the whole Northeast braces to see where birds are dying of West Nile virus, this makes the book quite topical. In a sense, the book has a tragic, or potentially tragic, arc to it. After some introductory material about mosquitoes, the authors go on to discuss the truly heroic efforts that were made to identify the cause of malaria, and once mosquitoes were identified as the culprits, to combat this pest. Eventually, this led to a wholesale effort to eradicate the disease entirely, an effort which obviously failed, despite some marked successes. In this section of the book Spielman is refreshingly forthright about the reasons for the ultimate failures and about what worked and what didn't. Essentially, success was predicated on : draining water sources that in the past had been allowed to stagnate; installing screens in homes and using netting at night; pouring oil on the standing water where mosquitoes breed; and brief but aggressive use of insecticides, like DDT; made it possible to limit and in some cases eliminate malaria outbreaks in human populations. It was not actually necessary to wipe out the mosquitoes, merely to deny them easy contact with already diseased humans. But in recent decades a number of factors have combined to deter the application of these techniques. The most obvious has been the hysteria over DDT and other insecticides, much of it stirred up by Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring. The wild overreaction to potential problems with the way in which these chemicals were being used fifty years ago has made it difficult to deploy one of our most effective weapons in the fight against mosquitoes. Problems have also arisen because eradication programs are seen as interfering with the rights of natives and have been perceived as part of the broader imperialist, racist, hegemonic, imposition of Western will on Third World nations. Also, though the book does not discuss it, the current fetishisizing of wetlands seems as if it must inevitably create situations where human populations are once again living in close proximity to the miasmic waters where mosquitoes breed, a frightening reversal of the long and arduous drainage process that had done so much to limit this kind of contact. Meanwhile, man has continued to expand his reach into the remotest corners of the globe, in the process being exposed to rarer and less well understood diseases than malaria. At the same time, air travel and shipping (particularly of old tires, as the reader will be fascinated to find out) have served to spread both mosquitoes and these diseases throughout the world. Such are the elements that went into the appearance of West Nile virus in New England over the past few years. Mosquito discusses this history and the many issues involved in a clear and fair fashion. The authors avoid easy blame-casting and are generous--perhaps overgenerous--in assessing folks motives, but they make it quite obvious that we've placed ourselves in a dangerous situation. After a years long struggle against the mosquito, we seem to be quite consciously ignoring everything we've learned, to have surrendered our most effective weapons in the struggle against one of nature's most potent disease vectors. The book concludes with a series of eminently sensible steps that we can all take, and steps that public health officials must take, in order for man to coexist with mosquitoes, without putting ourselves at unnecessary and potentially disastrous risk. Even if most of us will feel that some of the motivation for these measured steps stems from a little to great a respect and fondness for the mosquito on Spielman's part, it is nonetheless true that by the end of the book, he's made a compelling case that, even if we won't all love them as he does, we are likely to have to accept the idea that, however bothersome, they will always be with us. His suggestions are sensible and moderate enough that it seems like that we should be able to do so. GRADE : B+
Rating: 
Summary: Mosquito - a most enjoyable book.
Review: This book is primarily focused on the history and epidemiology of mosquito borne human disease. It is very well written, easy to read and is logically laid out. Unfortunately, the title is a little misleading in that there is relatively little information on the natural history of the mosquito, but this did not detract from my enjoyment of this book, and I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: A great book
Review: This is fun book about a subject that everybody hates. Nobody likes mosquitos, they are annoying little beasts and some of them may just kill you. The book starts with a summary of how mosquitos live and reproduce. The only complaint that I have is that I wish this section was a little longer. I would have liked it if the book went into a bit more detail about the diversity of mosquitos. I liked the way the book described the influences that mosquitos have had through history. The sections about yellow fever and malaria are informative. I really enjoyed this book. It does give you a good feel for how these little terrors are dealt with. The books is a fast read and it keeps your interest. If you travel or have an interest in mosquitos, this would be a good read.
Rating:
Summary: Dispatches from a Losing War
Review: What animal presents the greatest danger to humans? With our predilection for blood and guts (and scary movies) we are likely to answer sharks, or lions and tigers and bears. This is wrong by a factor of millions. You yourself have hunted, and sometimes killed this most dangerous animal, but most of the time it has attacked you in stealth and escaped to attack again. It is the tiny mosquito that endangers us far more than the big, scary beasts. They caused 500 million cases of malaria last year, and a million deaths from it, and that's just malaria. We can swat a few, but for all our knowledge, large-scale control of the scourge eludes us. Just how big a problem mosquitoes pose is made clear in _Mosquito: A Natural History of Our Most Persistent and Deadly Foe_ by Andrew Spielman and Michael D'Antonio. A good deal of the book is told in the first person, for Spielman is a tropical disease specialist and a particular expert on mosquitoes and the diseases they transmit. (He has been bitten so many times he no longer gets welts.) D'Antonio is a journalist who has won a Pulitzer. The combination of the two has resulted in a surprisingly readable, scary, and humbling volume. The first section of the book is entitled "The Magnificent Enemy." It is clear that Spielman, after decades of trying to understand mosquitoes and battling them, holds them in admiration as finely tuned specimens produced by the pressures of evolution. (He is also able to refer to them as "the little devils" when they turn up where they are not wanted.) You knew that only females draw blood (this is to produce the eggs of the next generation), but did you know that they mostly eat rotting fruit? Much of the book is concerned with the illnesses that mosquitoes convey, and the symptoms make unpleasant reading. Mosquitoes have changed history, and many instances are included here. DDT saw wartime use in the WWII Pacific, and scientists thought we could have eradicated mosquitoes by now, but here are the war's results: "Today, a map colored to illustrate the worldwide distribution of malaria does not look much different from one drawn in 1955." The authors argue against the ban of DDT which various ecological groups are calling for. It is no longer dangerously overused, it is cheap, and it saves lives. It can't work very well if we keep transporting mosquitoes to new populations, as international travel is making it easier to do. The book gives a useful summary of what works against mosquitoes and what doesn't. Repellants work, especially those with DEET, as does any oily substance spread on the skin. Screens are one of the main ways malaria was expelled from the United States. Bug zappers kill very few mosquitoes; ultrasonic devices do nothing; and sadly, culturing bats and mosquito-eating birds seems to have little effect. We are, for all our knowledge, making little headway against this tiny, dangerous enemy. This book effectively sums up the problems, and in an entertaining way brings us up to date on an important war we are far from winning.
Rating:
Summary: Dispatches from a Losing War
Review: What animal presents the greatest danger to humans? With our predilection for blood and guts (and scary movies) we are likely to answer sharks, or lions and tigers and bears. This is wrong by a factor of millions. You yourself have hunted, and sometimes killed this most dangerous animal, but most of the time it has attacked you in stealth and escaped to attack again. It is the tiny mosquito that endangers us far more than the big, scary beasts. They caused 500 million cases of malaria last year, and a million deaths from it, and that's just malaria. We can swat a few, but for all our knowledge, large-scale control of the scourge eludes us. Just how big a problem mosquitoes pose is made clear in _Mosquito: A Natural History of Our Most Persistent and Deadly Foe_ by Andrew Spielman and Michael D'Antonio. A good deal of the book is told in the first person, for Spielman is a tropical disease specialist and a particular expert on mosquitoes and the diseases they transmit. (He has been bitten so many times he no longer gets welts.) D'Antonio is a journalist who has won a Pulitzer. The combination of the two has resulted in a surprisingly readable, scary, and humbling volume. The first section of the book is entitled "The Magnificent Enemy." It is clear that Spielman, after decades of trying to understand mosquitoes and battling them, holds them in admiration as finely tuned specimens produced by the pressures of evolution. (He is also able to refer to them as "the little devils" when they turn up where they are not wanted.) You knew that only females draw blood (this is to produce the eggs of the next generation), but did you know that they mostly eat rotting fruit? Much of the book is concerned with the illnesses that mosquitoes convey, and the symptoms make unpleasant reading. Mosquitoes have changed history, and many instances are included here. DDT saw wartime use in the WWII Pacific, and scientists thought we could have eradicated mosquitoes by now, but here are the war's results: "Today, a map colored to illustrate the worldwide distribution of malaria does not look much different from one drawn in 1955." The authors argue against the ban of DDT which various ecological groups are calling for. It is no longer dangerously overused, it is cheap, and it saves lives. It can't work very well if we keep transporting mosquitoes to new populations, as international travel is making it easier to do. The book gives a useful summary of what works against mosquitoes and what doesn't. Repellants work, especially those with DEET, as does any oily substance spread on the skin. Screens are one of the main ways malaria was expelled from the United States. Bug zappers kill very few mosquitoes; ultrasonic devices do nothing; and sadly, culturing bats and mosquito-eating birds seems to have little effect. We are, for all our knowledge, making little headway against this tiny, dangerous enemy. This book effectively sums up the problems, and in an entertaining way brings us up to date on an important war we are far from winning.
Rating:
Summary: The full Buzzzzzz....
Review: Who would ever have known the amazing history behind one of the most annoying things that summer brings us every year? This insect, actually bringing the human race to its knees, is remarkable beyond belief. Mr. D'Antonio's ability to keep me interested in a subject that most people would never give a passing thought to is quite a feat. I couldn't wait for the end of my work day so that I could find a seat on the railroad and read up on what havoc this pest had, and still is, causing. Maybe one day we will be able to use this insect to pass along something that will help, rather then hinder, our health. Congratulations to Mr. D'Antonio on his excellent work.
Rating:
Summary: A most interesting little critter
Review: Who would ever have known the amazing history behind one of the most annoying things that summer brings us every year? This insect, actually bringing the human race to its knees, is remarkable beyond belief. Mr. D'Antonio's ability to keep me interested in a subject that most people would never give a passing thought to is quite a feat. I couldn't wait for the end of my work day so that I could find a seat on the railroad and read up on what havoc this pest had, and still is, causing. Maybe one day we will be able to use this insect to pass along something that will help, rather then hinder, our health. Congratulations to Mr. D'Antonio on his excellent work.
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