Mosquito: The Story of Man's Deadliest Foe

by Michael D'Antonio

Now in paperback — a fascinating work of popular science from a world-renowned expert on mosquitoes and a prize-winning reporter.

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.

Andrew Spielman, Sc.D., is one of the world's foremost authorities on mosquitoes and the infections they transmit. He is Harvard University's senior investigator in tropical disease.

Michael D'Antonio shared the Pulitzer Prize in journalism as part of a Newsday reporting team. He has written five acclaimed nonfiction books, including Atomic Harvest and Tin Cup Dreams.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, History, Biology, Medicine, Nature, Natural History

248 pages, Paperback

First published June 13, 2001

About the author

A Pulitzer Prize winning writer of books, articles, and original stories for film, Michael D’Antonio has published more than a dozen books, including Never Enough, a 2015 biography of presidential candidate and billionaire businessman Donald Trump. Described variously as “luminous,” “captivating,” “momentous” and “meticulous” Michael’s work is renowned for its clarity, balance, and thoroughness.

His works a have been noted as “best books of the year” or “editors’ picks” by The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Businessweek, The Chicago Tribune and Publisher’s Weekly. He has appeared on Sixty Minutes, Today, Good Morning, The Morning Show, America, Larry King Live, Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Diane Rehm, Coast-to-Coast, and many other programs.

Before becoming a fulltime author, Michael worked as a journalist in New York, Washington, and Maine. He has written for Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, The Times of London Magazine, Discover, Sports Illustrated, The Los Angeles Times Magazine and many others. He has received numerous awards including the 1984 Pulitzer Prize, shared with a team at Newsday that explored the medical, legal, and ethical issues surrounding the Baby Jane Doe case.

In 2016, Michael has became a regular contributor for CNN, both on-air and on their website. His pieces can be read here: http://www.cnn.com/profiles/michael-d...

D’Antonio has been the recipient of the Alicia Patterson Fellowship, the First Amendment Award, and the Humanitas Award for his Showtime film, Crown Heights. Born and raised in New Hampshire, Michael now lives on Long Island with his wife, Toni Raiten-D’Antonio who is a psychotherapist, professor, and author of three acclaimed books.

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything you never actually wanted to know about mosquitos. And when I say everything, I mean that. From geographic distribution, to all the parts of the tiny body, via the science of malaria and politics of eradication. It's all immensely readable which is a triumph of good writing considering the subject.

Will it make you love the not-really-humble mosquito, bastard flying torture machine that it is? Will it make you think of this kamikaze insect with more respect? Will it help you defeat the enemy a la Sun Tzu? No to all of this, but it's still a really interesting book.

Years ago I had dengue fever and moved house. It was the easiest house move I ever did - I couldn't move. I had to be carried to the bathroom even. The other name for dengue is breakbone fever. It feels like someone has smashed your skull behind your eyes and that every bone in your body has been broken. There isn't any treatment for it, you just have to make sure you don't get dehydrated and wait it out. A few years ago a friend's husband got the very rare haemorrhagic dengue fever. He was medivac'd out to a hospital in the US but he still died.

Dengue is going around again I heard yesterday. The streets are getting sprayed, the Public Health people are going around houses asking if you have anything, plant pot bases, old tyres, discarded toys in the garden that might be holding water. Dengue isn't common around here and isn't fatal apart from the haemorrhagic variety, but it is worrying, it's just the most painful illness you can imagine. Fingers crossed.

[Roy Lotz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a thoroughly fascinating book about one of my least favorite things in the world. And I am one of the lucky ones. Even when those around me are getting eaten alive, I am normally spared the worst of the mosquito onslaught, for reasons that are largely elusive. Indeed, when I was an undergraduate studying in Kenya, one of my classmates did a small study on us, counting our bites and trying to see if they correlated with blood-type or other variables like perfume or shampoo. Since all of us had the same schedule, it seemed a promising study. But, alas, no insight was gained, though I was surprised to find that some of us had well over 60 bites, while I had less than 10.

Yet mosquitoes are more than annoyances; they are major vectors of disease, as I was reminded of daily when I took my malaria prophylactic. And after giving the reader some basic facts of mosquito biology, the book focuses on disease control. There was much I did not know. For example, I had no idea that malaria was once present in New Jersey and New York, until aggressive government policies in the early 1900s eliminated the scourge. Similarly, I had no notion of the role that the Tennessee Valley Authority had in freeing America’s south from the malarial menace, largely by destroying mosquito nesting sites.

I also learned more about the story of Yellow Fever in the Americas. Though it may seem obvious to us nowadays that a disease can be transmitted by a mosquito bite, this was quite a controversial claim in the year 1900. It took careful work by a team of doctors in Cuba to prove that mosquitoes, not blood or bile, communicated the illness. This insight quickly led to the program of insect control that was instrumental in the building of the Panama Canal—a project that had proven impossible for the French, who labored under ignorance of the disease’s cause, and had to abandon the project as thousands of workers succumbed.

The authors of the book also have much to say on the subject of DDT. Having only read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, I had only been exposed to the argument against this popular pesticide. But Spielman and D’Antonio make a good case that, when used responsibly, the potential benefits of DMT far outweighs its health risks. Unfortunately, the pesticide was used to such a huge extent during the anti-malaria wars of the 1950s that it has lost much of its efficacy via accumulated resistance in mosquito populations. Spielman (the book’s entomologist) believes that this effort was ill-conceived, since it aimed for the impossible goal of total vector elimination, and it only resulted in the blunting of DDT, our most powerful weapon (not to mention decreased resistance in the human population from temporary reduction in malaria rates).

Malaria remains a major problem in vast areas of the world. We do not have an effective vaccine, and the plasmodium which causes the disease can evolve in response to drug treatments in just the same way that mosquitoes can evolve in response to DDT. And while those in temperate climates may be inclined to view it as a distant concern, this may soon prove not to be the case, as global warning expands the range of malaria-carrying mosquitoes northward. For my part, I think we are due for another big anti-malaria push, this time using smarter methods. But like the mosquito itself, the malaria parasite is one of our oldest enemies, having evolved with us for millions of years; so it may not be easy.

The authors close with a modern example of a tropical disease making it to a temperate zone: the 1999 West Nile outbreak in the New York City region. Surprisingly, I can remember this, even though I was only eight years old at the time. My mother told me that I had to stay inside on a beautiful summer night because they were spraying for mosquitoes. Soon, the helicopter came roaring by, dusting the area with insecticide. My brother remembers the entire playground in his Kindergarten being covered in a tarp to avoid getting sprayed. Such efforts did not succeed to eliminate West Nile in the United States, and now it circulates in the local bird and mosquito populations, closely monitored.

If the current pandemic helps to spur us to more aggressive public health measures, then I think mosquito control should be close to the top of the agenda. As Spielman himself notes, the mosquito does not serve any crucial functions in ecosystems—not as pollinators or even as prey—and are the most significant animal vectors of disease on the planet. Indeed, the mosquito is so perfectly useless and so perfectly dreadful that you wonder how anyone can maintain their faith in an almighty and infinitely loving God when faced with such a horrid product of evolution. They really are awful little things. And though we can never hope to eliminate them entirely, there is hope that we can break the chain of disease transmission long enough to at least make their bites mere itchy annoyances rather than a harbinger of doom.

[Kaethe · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading Petra's marvelous review I was keen to give it a read. Well, it's not exactly disappointment, picking up a book, recognizing every line, realizing you've already read and enjoyed it very much. Yay, of course, only now you have to find something else to read.

Very engaging book of science and medicine.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book: Mosquito: A Natural History of Our Most Persistent and Deadly Foe
Author: Andrew Spielman
Publisher: ‎ Icon Books Ltd; UK ed. edition (3 November 2016)
Publisher: ‎ Hachette Books; Reprint edition (15 May 2002)
Language: ‎ English
Paperback: ‎ 248 pages
Reading age: ‎ 18 years and up
Item Weight: ‎ 318 g
Price: 1600/-

When did you start your tricks
Monsieur?

What do you stand on such high legs for?
Why this length of shredded shank
You exaltation?

Is it so that you shall lift your centre of gravity upwards
And weigh no more than air as you alight upon me,
Stand upon me weightless, you phantom? – D.H. Lawrence, The Mosquito

“We don’t know yet if mosquitoes have an absolute purpose ecologically. The males do drink nectar and pollinate plants, but not to the degree that other insects do, like bees. They don’t ingest waste, like some other insects do. As far as we know, they don’t serve an indispensable food source for any other animal. So no—looking at the historical impact of the mosquito, perhaps their role is a Malthusian check against uncontrolled population growth, and within the ecological balance and equilibrium of Mother Nature.” – [The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator, Timothy Winegard]

At the dawn of the 21st century, the mosquito and the pathogens she spreads command notice universally. Each year millions die from mosquito-borne malaria. National economies cringe due to the extent, of the same disease. Cities in Europe and the United States battle outbreaks of the West Nile virus. Dozens of countries fight yellow fever, dengue, filariasis, and countless noxious encephalitis viruses.

The mosquito has killed more people than any other cause of death in human history. Statistical extrapolation situates mosquito-inflicted deaths approaching half of all humans that have ever lived. In plain numbers, the mosquito has dispatched an estimated 52 billion people from a total of 108 billion all the way through our comparatively concise 200,000-year existence.

This insect is not just a prickly pest, but a force of nature that has dictated the conclusion of momentous episodes throughout human history. From ancient Athens to World War II, there have been key moments when mosquito-borne diseases caused militaries to crumble, great leaders to fall ill, and populations to be left susceptible to invasion.

All around the globe, historians recorded the bane of mosquitoes. Evidence of outbreaks survives from ancient India and Mesopotamia. In ancient China, men traveling to malarious areas were advised to arrange for their wives’ remarriage before departing. Many Egyptian mummies have enlarged spleens, a symptom of the disease.

Alexander the Great was probably killed by malaria in 323 B.C. Carthage was known to be infected at the time of Christ, and malaria almost certainly helped prevent Genghis Khan from invading Western Europe.

Until the 1890s, no one would know for sure that the fevers, which most likely afflicted the very first human beings to evolve in Africa, were carried by mosquitoes. Nevertheless, over and over again, physicians and chroniclers fittingly associated dirty, standing water with these illnesses.

And they also linked them to travel, armies on the move, and the clash of cultures.

Here they were correct again. Changing human habits donate to mosquito-borne epidemics.

20 or 30 thousand years ago, when humans lived in small, isolated communities, so did their germs. Malaria, various parasites, and viruses were delivered by mosquitoes, made their attacks, and the body responded with illness and then either death or partial or complete immunity.

A certain balance was struck, permitting both the microbes and the human animal to persist and perhaps also to prosper.
The balance began to change when European exploration of remote lands expanded into commerce.

The first traders brought their own microbes—really unpleasant biological weapons—into virgin environments where the bodies of the locals were ill prepared to fight them.

Yet, the mosquito does not openly harm anyone. It is the toxic and highly evolved diseases the mosquito transmits that cause an infinite barrage of anguish and death. Without the mosquito, however, these ominous pathogens could not be transferred or vectored to humans nor continue their cyclical contagion. In fact, without the mosquito, these diseases would not exist at all.

The mosquito has without fail been at the front lines of history as ‘the grim reaper’, the harvester of human populations, and the eventual agent of historical change. She has played a greater role in shaping our story than any other animal with which we share our global village.

Within these bloody and disease-plagued pages, you will embark on a chronological mosquito-tormented journey through our tangled communal history.

This book has been divided into three parts.

Part One, entitled the ‘Magnificent Enemy’ is concerned with the life of the mosquito. It investigates the mosquito’s world, with all its dangers. And it examines the mosquito’s adjustment to different environments, including those special niches where mosquitoes and people come together.

The chapters included here are:

1. The Mosquito Herself
2. An Insect’s World
3. Tigers and Tires

Part Two, entitled ‘The Mosquito and Disease’, sheds light on the mosquito’s close relationship with human beings. Centuries back, a few bright minds actually guessed that there was a connection between mosquitoes and diseases such as malaria and yellow fever. But this concept was so unbelievable to the mainstream of science at the time that it was dismissed.

As recently as 1870, the idea that a mosquito might kill was considered laughable. The advanced discoveries of the mosquito’s lethal qualities were appalling to the general public. They led straight away to an epoch of fierce scientific rivalry.

What was learned changed our perception of disease and revolutionized the course of human history.

The chapters included here are:

4. Agent of History
5. Vector
6. Man against Mosquito

The final section of the book, i.e. Part Three, is called ‘The Balance’. This speaks of the modern era, which has understood the dangers posed by mosquitoes and tried to confront them. Much progress has been made. We now have effective therapies for many mosquito-borne diseases. And we have workable methods for confronting mosquitoes in the environment.

The chapters included here are:

7. The Great Mosquito Crusade
8. Disease without Borders
9. Living with Mosquitoes

What is it that this book tells us, in fine? The following:

1) This creature has dictated terms on the earth for 190 million years and has slain with constant potency for most of her unrivaled reign of terror.

2) This minuscule but persistent insect has punched well above its weight class with unadulterated vehemence and intensity. Across the ages, she has imposed her resolve on humanity and has ordered the course of history.

3) The mosquito was the mastermind of events, nurturing and mothering the creation of the modern global order.

4) The mosquito has consumed almost every corner of our planet, devoured a gigantic selection of animals, including the dinosaurs, while collecting the corpses of an estimated 52 billion people for good measure.

5) The mosquito sponsored both the rise and fall of ancient empires, she gave birth to self-governing nations while heartlessly subduing and subjugating others.

6) She has crippled and even destroyed economies and has prowled the most important and crucial battles, menaced and slaughtered the greatest armies of her generations, and outmaneuvered the most celebrated generals and military minds ever mustered to arms, slaying many of these men in the course of her carnage.

7) Throughout mankind’s record of violence, Generals Anopheles and Aedes were powerful weapons of war, moonlighting as alarming foes or rapacious allies.

In recent years humans have somewhat dampened the offensive of this deadly predator. However, as natural global warming, hastened by greenhouse gas emissions, consumes our planet, the mosquito is increasing the battlefield by opening new fronts and piercing areas of operation previously liberated of mosquito-borne diseases.

Its reach is mounting, expanding both north and south and perpendicularly into higher altitudes as previously untapped regions warm up to her presence.

Stalwart mosquito-borne diseases maintain a steadfast evolutionary commitment to survival and pose a mounting threat to progressively mobile and mingling human populations.

Even in the face of modern science and medicine, the mosquito remains the most hazardous animal to humankind.

To meet the health threats that are growing worse in many corners of the world, we must know the mosquito and see clearly her place in nature.

More important, we should understand many aspects of our relationship to this tiny, ubiquitous insect, and appreciate our long, historical struggle to share this planet.

D.H. Lawrence ends his poem ‘The Mosquito’ with the following lines:

Can I not overtake you?
Are you one too many for me
Winged Victory?
Am I not mosquito enough to out-mosquito you?

Queer, what a big stain my sucked blood makes
Beside the infinitesimal faint smear of you!
Queer, what a dim dark smudge you have disappeared into!

Humanity has to voyage few million miles more before this gruesome predator can truthfully become a smudge

An attention-grabbing book! Get a copy if you choose.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

A couple of criticisms:

The author states "More than most other living things, the mosquito is a self-serving creature. [...] She does not even serve as an essential food item for some other animal."

I find this to be hyperbole, and a statement of the author's worldview rather than an objective statement about mosquitoes.

As well, this book is hardly a natural history. It would be more appropriate to remove "natural" from the title as much of the book is spent chronicling the history of trying to control or eradicate mosquitoes.

Otherwise, this is a wonderful book. It is very readable and an excellent source of information.

[J. Lee Hazlett · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. I picked this book up at a local charity shop, and was surprised by how engaging it was. Insects are far from a favorite reading topic of mine, but this book did a great job of making potentially complex topics ranging from mosquito anatomy to the history of human-mosquito relations to modern epidemiology not only understandable, but interesting to read about. I had no idea how much I didn't know about mosquitoes, and many related topics (some of which were a surprise), until I read this highly accessible book. I sincerely wish that a new edition of this book would be issued, with the update perhaps done by one of the original author's students, as so much has changed in terms of the science available to us (think our knowledge of and capabilites with gene sequencing, splicing, etc.) and social programs (such as the WHO'S Roll Back Malaria program) since the book's publication in 2001. It would be great to have updates on where our species' relationship with mosquitoes is currently and where we hope to take it in the near future alongside the excellent original text.

[RYD · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was born in southeast Alaska, where mosquitoes are everywhere, but I honestly never knew very much about them. This book taught me a lot: for instance, that they use human blood for reproduction and that if you're bit, it's going to be from a female. I also had not realized how much DDT was once considered a wonder chemical in the fight against malaria.

One passage I highlighted that I thought was interesting:

"More than most other living things, the mosquito is a self-serving creature. She doesn't aerate the soil, like ants and worms. She is not an important pollinator of plants, like the bee. She does not even serve as an essential food item for some other animal. She has no 'purpose' other than to perpetuate her species. That the mosquito plagues human beings is really, to her, incidental. She is simply surviving and reproducing."

[Shannon Donnelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprising. Actually a very good book from both a historical, curiosity, and scientific standpoint.

Details the organism itself then dives into blood borne diseases it carries and how the world has (or hasn’t) overcome them.

Another recommend!

[Samuel Muggington · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was published in 2001 but it is still relevant today. In fact, I wish the author could write an updated version. It is fascinating that such a tiny creature can have such tremendous effects on humans. The author points out that massive amounts of time, energy and money have been spent to defeat mosquito borne diseases but in the end, simple improvements in living standards, buildings, window and door screens, air conditioning, eliminating breeding grounds, etc. have more beneficial effects than the use of chemicals or genetic intervention.

I'm glad that there are dedicated entomologists like the author working on problems like this.

[Jesse Field · Rating 4 out of 5]

Practical, yet stylish and dramatic rendering of how mosquitoes spread disease, and humans belatedly have learned of this and taken countermeasures. The lead author is himself an important scientist in the field, modestly recounting his own contributions to understanding mosquito-related disease and public health strategizing in Sri Lanka, Barbados and several African countries. DDT and malathion have real practical uses, in his scientist’s view. A no-nonsense set of assessments near the end informs us that we will be facing new mosquito-borne diseases in the future. Somehow, he keeps all thus from sounding too grim. Would we could all have his objectivity.

[Randy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as engaging and informative as I had hoped, not much biology, mostly human connections (in a way that didn't grab me). Gave up about 2/3 of the way through

[Jane Wilson-Howarth · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit too America-centric for my taste (given that New World malaria, for example, isn't as deadly as in Africa and Oceania) and it is also now rather out of date.

[Del · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ordered this after seeing it pop up on a GR friend's reading list. As it happens, I ordered a completely different mosquito book (in my defence, the covers looked almost identical) written by someone else. Still, I gave this one a go anyway, and was rewarded with a great read.
In Scotland, we don't really have to worry about mosquitos; here it's midges - so small that you can be engulfed in a virtually invisible cloud of them before you're even aware of it - that blight our lives in warmer weather, and they're infuriatating, but harmless (although it was interesting to read here that Scotland did have a malaria problem at one point in the past). One thing that's always made me wary of travelling to far flung exotic locations (apart from the cost, duh) is the threat of disease; even the preventative pills and jabs available have side effects that don't sound particularly pleasant. And after reading this, I'm no less afraid of the idea of contracting malaria, or yellow fever, or denge, or encephilitis; but I have gained a new-found respect for mosquitos, and their resilience. And I learned a lot; how mosquitos have been the deciding factor in a couple of major wars for example (the Americans had better malaria medicines than the Japanese in the Pacific conflict in WWII, which meant they had less troops in sick beds and available on the battle field). They were here before us, they've come through every attempt we've made to eradicate them, and they'll doubtless be here long after we're gone. If you only read one book about mosquitos this year...

[Blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was camping this summer with my children and the mosquitos were horrendous. I realized I really didn't know much about mosquitos, so I found this book.

The book is quite informative and interesting enough to keep my attention. It was just what I was looking for. Some things I learned:
- Mosquitos have been shown to fly as much as 6 miles, and can potentially fly farther depending on wind conditions
- The aggressiveness of a mosquito and whether they attack your legs or your head varies by the species
- Ability to carry certain diseases also varies by species (I already knew this after reading about the Panama Canal several years ago)
- After sucking your blood, the mosquito needs to take a break and sit around for as much as an hour to get rid of the moisture in the blood so that they can fly
- India hasn't been exposed to malarial mosquitos... yet(!!!) - this could be disastrous
- On the other hand the US effectively eliminated malaria by a huge ditch-digging campaign to drain swamps and limit habitat for certain malaria-carrying mosquitos
- And a whole bunch of other stuff!

[Khushi · Rating 3 out of 5]

i ran through the first section of this book freely, filled with textual illustrations of the mosquito's structural biology, evolution, movements, reproductive cycle, and fun anecdotes of the author's experiences working with them.

section two and section three, however, jump into the relationship of the mosquito with man, and the book loses me a little bit there. not because this relationship isn't important to characterize the mosquito, but because it ends up taking the bulk of the book and shifts the onus from the mosquito itself. we go from a 'natural history' novel to what reads like a layman's mosquito epidemiology and disease prevention article, which is frankly not what i signed up for.

i'm glad i finally got around to finishing it but i wish the rest of the book had been spent on more cool things about mosquitoes rather than how they are very good at killing us. surely we all know this already...

[Erik Empson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book essentially about the diseases caused by the mosquito.
Not quite what I was expecting, given it concentrated much on the mosquito as a vector of disease and construed a narrative around that, rather than the mosquito as an insect. But eye-opening reading nonetheless, particularly on the returning threat of malaria and other diseases like Dengue and West Nile that the mosquito acts as a vector of.
One of the informative elements of the book is the extent of large scale engineering projects undertaken with the explicit purpose of eliminating habitats for the insect, and particularly the success of them.
The final message of the book, that to control the diseases which the mosquito spreads one needs to eradicate poverty is a sobering one. Reassuring in one sense - that it is ultimately a human problem - and worrying for the same reason.

[Ellen Rolfes]

Yes, my hatred of mosquitos caused me to read a whole book about them. (Who said the phrase, get close to your enemies?)

This is a great book about an insect that is a survivor, that makes more humans sick every year than any other single living agent.

Before I read this book, I thought that we'd be able to eradicate mosquitoes from the face of the earth. But now I doubt that we can ever defeat them altogether. And like the author suggests, I may hate mosquitoes but I definitely appreciate them after learning more about them.

[gojenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a fiction reader, I have been amazed by the readability of Mosquito. Information is presented clearly and easily understood. I found it fascinating and relatable.
I've long said I have Type M blood, because at a gathering where one or two others may be bitten, I will suffer from half a dozen large welting, maddeningly itchy bites. Sadly, the author does not address my malady, but I've learned so much about my miniscule enemy.

[Emily Brodke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled with how to rate this because 3 stars seems unfair, but I’m not sure where else to put it 🦟🦟🦟 by the time I read this, it was pretty out of date, which isn’t a reflection of the quality of the book. It’s very well written and interesting in a way that shows the author’s talent for science comm and making the heavy details interesting! For an intro to these lil gals I would recommend

[Mihai Pop · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read but not in the ways I expected it to be. It talks very little about how this insect developed through the time, but rather talks solely about it's relationship and implication with humanity - and the subject here is "diseases". What it does deliver it is the high adaptation capacity of the populations and the ability to speciate in a fast manner.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

In general, this book uses a fair amount of accessible language, particularly in the the beginning. Not only is the book rather informative, but it's also somewhat entertaining and interesting. I wasn't bogged down by overly scientific language, and I definitely understand more about mosquitoes.

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Livre très intéressant, cependant j’ai préféré la première partie qui traitait de la vie des moustiques et de leurs particularités car j’y ai appris beaucoup de faits intéressants. La seconde partie était également intéressante mais elle expliquait principalement l’histoire de la malaria, et donc était moins centrée sur les moustiques. Première partie 5/5 deuxième partie 3/5

[Pat Watt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A real page turner for me, covering the natural history and deadly results of humanity’s apex predator. Over 30,000 different species surviving through a long arm of geological time and probably responsible for billions of human deaths.

[Garth · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good I read it three times and passed my Category K test for the State. Deep and insightful, this tome has made me see the insect as something surreal. Some of the information is antiquate as is some of the language but it was easily one of the best books I've read in many years.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything you wanted to know about mosquitoes. Really good read and thank science for yellow fever vaccines! Gruesome disease. Poignant though as talks about all the good works of US in funding mosquito control programs overseas….

[David Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating read and informative. Learned many new facts about mosquitos and their relationship as the vector to so many different diseases.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating reading. Perfect for this summer in New England when wet weather produced a bountiful harvest of mosquitos, all ravenous.

[Joe Beeson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of information, fun to read. Can't say I have a whole lot more insight into what our future with mosquitos looks like other than managing their habitat.

[Bernard Lavallee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

A nice thorough discussion about Mosquitos and the illness they can deliver. Plenty of science as well as social interaction.

[Linda Is on her way · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5