| Description |
xiv, 259 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Note |
Illustrations include life-size images of bedbugs on first page of each chapter. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-251) and index. |
| Contents |
Prologue : Mysterious bites -- Cryptic insect : meet the bed bug -- The fall : DDT and the slaying of the beast -- The forgotten era : out of sight, out of mind -- The return : a pyrethroid paradox -- Annihilation : by any means necessary -- Fear : when things go bite in the night -- Money : the Wild West of the bed bug economy -- Mysterious rash : the psychological toll of travel -- The origin of a species : the bed bug's beginning -- Epilogue : Horror, curiosity, and joy -- Appendix 1. Brooke's bed bug guide -- Appendix 2. Bed bug songs -- Appendix 3. Bed bug literature -- Appendix 4. Bed bug limericks. |
| Summary |
A book about bedbugs is, by necessity, a book about nearly everything: about travel and adventure, about our relationship to nature, about how scientists solve problems, about trust and whether we view strangers as friends or foes. It is a book about what people will do under extreme circumstances, and about environmental politics, and art and mental illness. It is even a book about kinky sex. Brooke Borel deftly takes us through this arthropod microcosm of the universe, as she traces the culture and biology of a resurgent scourge…[Infested] is something of a bedbug appreciation, not in the sense of praising the insects (though I challenge anyone to come away from her stories without at least a begrudging admiration), but as a way of fully understanding how their lives are intertwined with ours. |
| Subject |
Bedbugs -- History.
|
| ISBN |
9780226041933 (cloth: alkaline paper) |
|
022604193X (cloth: alkaline paper) |
|
