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The Mosquito
The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator | Timothy C. Winegard
"Hugely impressive, a major work."--NPR A pioneering and groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction that offers a dramatic new perspective on the history of humankind, showing how through millennia, the mosquito has been the single most powerful force in determining humanitys fate Why was gin and tonic the cocktail of choice for British colonists in India and Africa? What does Starbucks have to thank for its global domination? What has protected the lives of popes for millennia? Why did Scotland surrender its sovereignty to England? What was George Washington's secret weapon during the American Revolution? The answer to all these questions, and many more, is the mosquito. Across our planet since the dawn of humankind, this nefarious pest, roughly the size and weight of a grape seed, has been at the frontlines of history as the grim reaper, the harvester of human populations, and the ultimate agent of historical change. As the mosquito transformed the landscapes of civilization, humans were unwittingly required to respond to its piercing impact and universal projection of power. The mosquito has determined the fates of empires and nations, razed and crippled economies, and decided the outcome of pivotal wars, killing nearly half of humanity along the way. She (only females bite) has dispatched an estimated 52 billion people from a total of 108 billion throughout our relatively brief existence. As the greatest purveyor of extermination we have ever known, she has played a greater role in shaping our human story than any other living thing with which we share our global village. Imagine for a moment a world without deadly mosquitoes, or any mosquitoes, for that matter? Our history and the world we know, or think we know, would be completely unrecognizable. Driven by surprising insights and fast-paced storytelling, The Mosquito is the extraordinary untold story of the mosquitos reign through human history and her indelible impact on our modern world order.
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review
keithlafo
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Mehso-so

Interesting, but a bit misleading. This isn‘t a history of the mosquito, it‘s a broad coverage of large historical events (The Crusades, the Black Death, etc) and how mosquitos affected those events. I would have preferred and out-and-out history of the mosquito.

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Ang203l
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Determined to finish this one today! #catsoflitsy

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Singout
Bailedbailed

I almost finished this #bookspin, a runner up for the Canadian NF award last year, but couldn‘t get through it. It‘s a good overview of Western history, but should be more global: Asia (except the Mongols and Vietnam war) are left out, as are sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, and South America. It‘s also very military. Mosquitoes and diseases were at first an interesting historical lens that I got tired of.
#Nonfiction2021 #SomethingAboutHistory

Singout The Dire Portent at the end about the possibility of an incredibly destructive global virus in the near future was telling. 3y
Riveted_Reader_Melissa At least it‘s one more off your shelf, one way or the other. 3y
TheAromaofBooks Great progress!! 3y
6 likes3 comments
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Singout
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Artemisinin, a wormwood variety described 2200 years ago in an ancient medical Chinese textbook as curing fever, was re-discovered as an anti malaria drug in the 1970s by Chinese military scientists asked for medical research by Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam war.
The team was led by Tu Youyou, a female scientist without a doctorate, a medical degree, or training abroad, who was awarded the Nobel prize in 2015.

7 likes1 stack add
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Singout
Mehso-so

#Bookspin for May:

1. Girl, Woman, Other
2. Butter Honey Pig Bread
3. Lost Children Archive
4. Long Way Home
5. Timbuktu
6. Talk about Race
7. The Salt Path
8. Hidden Life of Trees
9. Africville
10. Chop Suey Nation
11. Bush Runner
12. Homegoing
13. No Friend but the Mountains
14. Death and Life of Great Cities
15. The Innocents
16. How to Pronounce Knife
17. Unsettling Canada
18. The New Jim Crow
19. Five Little Indians
20. Seven

TheAromaofBooks Yay!!! 3y
9 likes1 comment
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Singout

Interesting info about Devils Island, off the coast of French Guyana, which was a prison used by the French starting in the 1700s, after the settlers seeking some kind of paradise were mostly killed off by mosquito-borne diseases.

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Singout

Factoid: Oliver Cromwell died of malaria rather than try a cure —“the Popish remedy”— that had been developed by Catholic Jesuits.

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Singout

My #Bookspin for this month! It might‘ve been one from last year too. It was a runner-up for Canada‘s non-fiction award last year: I started it but didn‘t finish it but will try again. History (by a military historian) which relies pretty heavily so far (I‘ve gotten to ancient Rome) on Western history, with a focus on how mosquitoes and mosquito-borne diseases play a role. I think I‘ll make it my falling to sleep book.

6 likes1 comment
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Singout

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation releases an annual report that identifies the animals most lethal to humans. The average annual average number of human deaths caused by the mosquito has hovered around 2 million. We come in a distant second at 475,000, followed by snakes, dogs and sand flies, the tsetse fly, and the assassin and kissing bugs.

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RamsFan1963
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Mehso-so

Very detailed and informative, but it does go on a bit too long. I'm not sure I buy the author's arguement over the importance of the Mosquito. Man doesn't seem to be the master of his own fate in Winegard's view, the mosquito has decided the rise and fall of every empire, chosen our leaders and picked the countries man can inhabit. It's a little too grandiose to me. 3 🦟🦟🦟

1st book finished for #CYOreadathon. @Sace

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Addison_Reads
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Mehso-so

Overall this one was just okay for me. It does have a ton of interesting information, but I felt like it became redundant after a few chapters. Any major event with catastrophes, blame the mosquito. I realize they play a huge part in transmitting disease, but it made the writing boring to keep hearing similar explanations.

I'm glad I went with audio on this one because I might have given up on the physical book.

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keithmalek
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Mehso-so

This one is hard to rate. Because even though it's filled with really interesting facts (you can tell by the number of times I posted), and even though it's crucial to understand the role of the mosquito if you want to understand history, I can't help but to feel that this might have been better as an artice than an entire book. This is somewhere between a So-So and a Pick.

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keithmalek
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keithmalek
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keithmalek

As William Ukers advocated in his 1922 book, All About Coffee, "Wherever it has been introduced it has spelled revolution. It has been the world's most radical drink in that its function has always been to make people think. And when the people began to think, they became dangerous to tyrants."

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keithmalek
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WanderingBookaneer Lol... I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. 4y
9 likes1 stack add1 comment
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keithmalek

Geneticists believe that 8-10% of people living in the former Mongol empire are a direct lineage of Genghis Khan. To put this another way, roughly 40-45 million people currently on the planet are his direct descendants. If we collected all the descendants of Genghis Khan into one country, it would be the thirtieth most populous nation in the world today, ahead of countries like Canada, Poland, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Australia.

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keithmalek
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keithmalek
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Thndrstd Thanks for sharing these quotes. This book sounds fascinating and I need to read it 4y
11 likes1 stack add1 comment
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keithmalek
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keithmalek
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It goes on to say that wearing bright colors also attracts mosquitoes, as does smelling nicely from shampoos and perfumes. Beer also attracts mosquitoes.

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keithmalek
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keithmalek

"Books give a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything." --Plato

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keithmalek
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keithmalek
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keithmalek
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The two words on the previous page before this passage are, "Statistically throughout"

BarbaraBB The mosquito! Fun fact! 4y
8 likes1 comment
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keithmalek
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(Continued)...chickenpox and shingles; pigs and ducks donated influenza; and from cattle arose measles, tuberculosis and smallpox.

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keithmalek
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keithmalek
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review
Hooked_on_books
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Pickpick

I was expecting this to be a science book, demonstrating my inability to read subtitles, but it is a history of how the mosquito, specifically mosquito-borne disease, has impacted human civilizations. It‘s heavily US- and Western-centric and mostly interesting, but it does get a bit redundant after a while. Basically, mosquitos are evil and secretly rule the world. Between pick and so-so.

Cinfhen Mosquitos ARE EVIL!!! And yes, they RULE the world 😷 4y
Megabooks Hmmm...probably not moving this up my TBR! 4y
Hooked_on_books @Megabooks I would have preferred it to be science. There were some truly fascinating things in here, but at almost 500 pages, it‘s a bit of a tome. I don‘t blame you. 😂 4y
48 likes1 stack add3 comments
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Hooked_on_books
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Audio model building! I enjoyed my last model building experience so much that I decided to embark upon another model. It‘s another bookstore and it‘s turning out super cute so far! Though I have to say putting together all the tiny books has been a bit tedious at times. This is a good book to pair with it—a long history of the effect of mosquitos on (mostly Western) human civilization.

Amiable Very cute! 4y
Mitch Amazing! 👏🏻👏🏻 (edited) 4y
annahenke I used to love make miniatures. I had this book from American Girl publications with a guide to making all kinds of things. 4y
See All 12 Comments
Moray_Reads it's beautiful 😍
4y
Chrissyreadit This is incredible! 4y
Lindy Nice project! Learning about mosquitoes is probably a good strategy for coping with these annoying creatures. 🦟 4y
squirrelbrain Oh it‘s so cute! 4y
Megabooks I picked this book up too. Can you tag me in your review? The model looks great! 4y
LeahBergen Oh, that‘s amazing! 😍 4y
Nute Wow! I‘ve only seen this type of project for a doll house. This is super cool! 4y
Hooked_on_books @Nute I had never seen anything like this until last fall. There‘s a lot of different kits out there. It can be frustrating at times, but it‘s fun and satisfying! 4y
Bette This looks amazing! 🙂👍❤️ 4y
53 likes12 comments
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DreesReads
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January round-up, non-poetry edition. Tagged book was my favorite (and only nonfiction) of the bunch. 3 audiobooks, 3 short story collections, 1 in translation, and the 1 nonfiction.

mollyrotondo How did you like the memory police? 4y
DreesReads @mollyrotondo I liked it, but it is quite surreal, I had to just let go of the fact that it was not realistic. Once I did that I enjoyed it more. I liked it more than The Housekeeper and the Professor. 4y
26 likes2 comments
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DreesReads
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Pickpick

5⭐️! This nonfiction book covers the history and context of how mosquitos have affected human history, largely through the transmission of malaria and yellow fever. From the Roman and Mongol Empires, to the decimation of native populations in the Americas, the African slave trade, wars for independence (US, Haiti, central/South American nations)—the mosquito has been there. Also looks at malarial drugs, but this is not a science book. #netgalley

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plemmdog
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Mehso-so

I always pick a hefty book to read for early winter. Last year was the Korean War. This year, the mosquito. So far, it‘s a bit of a slog, and the historian keeps calling the insect General Anopheles, which annoys me. While some parts are interesting, I can‘t wholeheartedly recommend this one. I‘ve never read Jared Diamond and curious if they‘re good and less dry.

Megabooks I read this by Diamon in college and loved it. 4y
10 likes1 comment
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Nitpickyabouttrains
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Pickpick

Nonfiction about the mosquito, how it can spread disease, and how it has altered the course of human history.

keithmalek I just finished reading a book that you might like called "Bitten" by Kris Newby. It's about how lyme disease was created as a biological weapon. 5y
Nitpickyabouttrains @keithmalek ohhh that does sound good. Thanks for the rec! 5y
16 likes2 stack adds2 comments
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Lauram
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I‘m hosting book club on Thursday and started the nearly weeklong preparation by finalizing my 5 selections for the group vote and pulling together a selection of wines. I can‘t wait to see what the group picks!

Trashcanman 🤜👀🤗🤗🤗🤗 5y
76 likes1 stack add1 comment
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wanderinglynn
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Found a new nonfiction book at Costco that looked pretty interesting. Let‘s see how the mosquito has determined the fate of humanity...

Velvetfur These little a-holes are one of only two animals I actually hate.....as in, despise (the other one is a bluebottle fly). So this book sounds really interesting! I did read somewhere once that they're the deadliest animal in the world, that sounds about right from reading the synopsis on here! I look forward to your thoughts as you read this :) 5y
KathyWheeler I got this for my husband because I knew he‘d love, but I may read it too. 5y
Laughterhp I hate mosquitos and if I go out in my backyard at night, I come back in with 20 bites (even with bugSpray). This book sounds interesting! Maybe this book will help me avoid them! 5y
See All 7 Comments
deepak26v Marvel superhero movie coming up !! 5y
Reggie I heard about this one and wanna kinda read it. I‘ll be looking forward to your review. 5y
Izaday i would have bought that too! i‘m fascinated by diseases and microscopic killers. putting it on the list 5y
Crazeedi This one looks fascinating 5y
100 likes7 stack adds7 comments
review
keepingupwiththepenguins
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Pickpick

Only female mosquitos bite. Of the 108 billion people who have lived on this planet, mosquitoes (more accurately, the viruses/parasites they carry) have killed nearly half. Do you know how elephants defend themselves against the mosquito‘s bite? You‘ll find the answer in Chapter 1, and it will surprise you. Text Publishing was kind enough to send me a copy, and a full review was sent to subscribers at https://www.keepingupwiththepenguins.com

43 likes4 stack adds