"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 yellow fever epidemics that plagued the Civil War-era population of New Orleans, to the current widespread West Nile fever panic.

They portray the eccentric pioneers and heroic scientists who, in the late nineteenth century, first made the connection between mosquitoes and disease. They chronicle the attempts in the twentieth century to wipe mosquito-borne disease off the face of the earth, and how these efforts have backfired thanks to a combination of hubris, miscalculation, and misinformation; they highlight, in particular, the debacle surrounding the use and banning of DDT.

And they explain what we can do as individuals and as a society to protect ourselves and our species."--BOOK JACKET.