Customer Reviews

Mosquito: The Story of Man's Deadliest Foe

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is a must for students of history and disease,
natural history, and popular history. It is especially timely in
light of the spread of the West Nile virus and can help the
reader to understand humanity's long struggle with disease
and the agents that can carry it. Well-written and informative, it reads more like a novel and is the very best
kind of popular history. Buy it - you'll like it!

Certainly, this book is not for the professional entomologist, but I am not an entomologist and found the book to be a relatively effective history of the mosquito, malaria and other diseases, and human understanding of this insect. Like other reviewers, I did think there was a bit much repetition, but the reading is easy, and it's certainly possible to skip over a paragraph here or there until new territory is reached.

There is brief treatment of the life cycle of the mosquito before the book settles into its primary topic, disease and its transmission. Discussions of DDT, West Nile virus, and methods of (attempted) mosquito eradication were, to me, informative, and I do believe I know significantly more now than I did before reading this book.

Dr. Spielman is described as a world-renowned expert on mosquitoes. Better him than me, I say. If you can get into this kind of subject, the book is an interesting read, and you'll never again look at a skeeter in quite the same way. Read this weird book to learn about how mosquitoes are born, how they live, love (okay it's not exactly love), and die.

I wanted to like this book, and the first chapter, I admit, was . . . well, infectious! But after chapter 2, the writing (col)lapsed into repetition, general assertions,vague hand-waving, and lack of descriptive, telling details, both scientific or anecdotal. The tone and diction are inconsistent, now scholarly, detached language, now cautionary common slang. Unbelievably,one of the key terms -- "disease vector" -- is never even defined!! This book reads like a C+ term paper hastily pulled from the internet, which is especially puzzling and disappointing considering the impressive authorial credentials (one is a leading researcher on mosquito-borne diseases!). What's more, Hyperion appears to have released what appears to be the same book under ***two different titles***: "A Natural History of Our Most Persistent and Deadly Foe" and "The Story of Man's Deadliest Foe" (and shouldn't that be "Humanity's" or "Our" deadliest foe??), except that this "Story of ..." title doesn't have photos. Don't waste your time on this one.

This book was written by a scientist and a journalist yet it was never clear to me what the contribution of the journalist was. The book writing showed knowledge, but not skills. The few attempts to make the reading captivating felt forced.

The content was great however and it was never tedious. It is just that some books really get you captivated regardless of the topic and this is not one of those books.

I wish it had covered a bit more about the different types of mosquitoes, and a bit more about their lives (only first 2 or 3 chapters do so). But it is still a worthwhile read. It talks a lot about the deadly diseases that are spread by mosquitoes and humans' long lasting battle against them.

Perhaps I was merely spoiled by the book I read right before reading this one (Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif), but I found this book thoroughly mediocre both in content and style. The author constantly shifts between 3rd person narrator/teacher, man-on-the-scene, and editorializer, without spending sufficient time as any one of them. In fact, I was often disappointed by the brevity with which each of the book's subtopics was explored. It weighs in at a sparse ~225 pages, large print.

Unless you have a particular interest in mosquitoes, I instead recommend Microbe Hunters, a classic (1926?) book on some of the important scientists and discoveries in the early history of microbiology.

TO read the book is very good to let the commoment people know something about mosquito and the protection methods.

I had only one question I wanted answered by this book -- why do mosquitos bite some people (such as me!) and not others. It was never addressed.