The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars | 990 ratings

Price: 21.66

Last update: 07-01-2024


Top reviews from the United States

fenx1200
5.0 out of 5 stars Put his book on your Bucket List!
Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2019
An excellent book detailing the history of the mosquito form the age of the dinosaur to the present day. The author takes you on a historical journey and you learn that the dinosaurs may have been weakened to the point of near extinction by the mosquito, and the asteroid impact may have been the coup de grace that sealed their fate. You will discover that the mosquito was essentially engaged in every major combat on the planet, from the earliest civilizations in Mesopotamia to the 300 Spartans, the Indian Wars, the revolutionary war, the Civil War, the first world war and the second world war, the building of the Panama Canal. Youll read about the Malarial parasite and how deadly it is and how it transforms itself to survive. How mosquitoes spread viruses around the world. This is truly a fascinating book. I do believe that it is time to eradicate the mosquito species involved in the transmission of Malaria and other dangerous viruses. This has already been accomplished by a company that has created genetically modified mosquitos that mate with a female and her offspring either dies or produces only males. So it can be done, but the environmental impact needs to be studied some more. It's also interesting that mosquitos have served as a barrier for humans and other mammals to enter certain areas. An example would be the Amazon rain forest. As humans clear cut this area, Mosquitos will attack and what new diseases will force us to move away from these areas?
A very good book and well worth the long read.
Kipster
5.0 out of 5 stars I give this book 5 stars.
Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2019
I really, really enjoy this book. I’m about half way through reading it. If I don’t comment now, I will forget! I like history and this book is a fascinating way to revisit world history and think about how much the mosquito has affected that history! Every paragraph is packed full of interesting facts. It’s fun to pause after each page and think about what I just read. The way the author writes, I can’t wait to turn the page and see what is next. I’d also like to share that I am reading this book out loud to a well educated and well traveled person whose vision isn’t as good as it used to be and that person likes the book as much as I do.
Harry Briley
4.0 out of 5 stars Highly repetitive and thus not a page turned that I expected - Still quite informative.
Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2024
He is so focused upon the nefarious mosquito that he seems to miss that he begins repeating himself. He will give a tip of the hat in a chapter to some historical aspect and then in a following chapter go into further detail about the very same factoid. Mostly, he follows a chronological timeline (except when he backtracks). It is not the page-turner that I expected. I have not finished reading but the scary general sense is that I want to encase myself in a plastic bubble slathered with insect repellent. The shock to me is that pregnant women become special targets and victims of this blood sucker. It would be a movie horror film if the actual virus' carried were not so deadly and disabling.
Tater Tutter
5.0 out of 5 stars Who knew mosquitoes as a vector of death have directed the course of history!?!
Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2024
I grew up in the Mississippi delta without air conditioning and mosquitoes were constant companions in the warm months of the year. I was one of those kids who would follow the mosquito fogger truck around the neighborhood and ride my bike in and out of the emitted insecticidal fog. When I came across this book I had to get it and read it. This book is not so much about the mosquito as it is about the mosquito as a vector for diseases like malaria and yellow fever that undermined military campaigns throughout history as naive forces came in to contact with diseases like malaria and yellow fever to which they had little or no immunity. I learned that sick soldiers are much more of a burden to armies than dead soldiers, malaria was used to treat syphilis (spirochetes cook in the fever), malaria inhibits the blood thinner in mosquito saliva so they have to bite more folks to get their full blood meal, there was no malaria in the New World (but there were mosquitoes) before it came over with the Europeans and Africans, and for now you're only safe in Antarctica. There are lots of other interesting little tidbits strewn throughout the book, but you have to wade through a lot of conflict to get them. That's OK, it was kind of a nice review of major conflicts throughout history.
John E.
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended!
Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2019
Loving this book! It is an interesting look at human history and an often overlooked influence thereon. Some of the influence of mosquito-borne diseases on our history is well known (for example; upon the construction of the Panama Canal). But this book points out how much of an influence it has been on so many other parts of our history such as the history of ancient Rome, Crusades, etc.

The book is written in an eminently readable narrative format which holds one's interest throughout. I highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in human history.
Aran Joseph Canes
3.0 out of 5 stars The Mosquito’s Guide to Western Civilization
Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2019
The Mosquito, while beginning and ending on interesting notes, is too much of a simplified retelling of the history of Western civilization to be worth reading. The first chapter explains the mechanism and evolutionary history of mosquito borne viruses while the last chapter describes both the private and public efforts to eradicate such diseases.

In between, there is a litany of descriptions of the great wars of the Western world with the repeated refrain that the winning side was aided by General Mosquito. We hear about the Peloponnesian war, the Punic conflicts, the Crusades, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the World Wars, the war in Vietnam...all of this seemingly oblivious to the fact that history does not proceed towards modern America as its apex. Even more, the fact that wars are only a part of human history is similarly ignored.

If the author could have simply stuck to describing the effect of mosquitos in these conflicts it would have been a much shorter book. Instead, he retells all of this from a mile high perspective. It’s not so much that he gets things wrong as that it’s impossible to do justice to three thousand years of history in a book ostensibly devoted to another topic.

What could have been a genuinely fascinating look into the effect of mosquitos on human history turns into a history of Western conflicts. Not recommended unless you are a devotee of military history.

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