Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect that Shaped the American FrontierThroughout the nineteenth century, swarms of locusts regularly swept across the continent, turning noon into dusk, demolishing farm communities, and bringing trains to a halt as the crushed bodies of insects greased the rails. In 1876, the U.S. Congress declared the locust "the single greatest impediment to the settlement of the country." From the Dakotas to Texas, from California to Iowa, the swarms pushed thousands of settlers to the brink of starvation, prompting the federal government to enlist some of the greatest scientific minds of the day and thereby jumpstarting the fledgling science of entomology. Over the next few decades, the Rocky Mountain locust suddenly -- and mysteriously -- vanished. A century later, Jeffrey Lockwood set out to discover why. Unconvinced by the reigning theories, he searched for new evidence in musty books, crumbling maps, and crevassed glaciers, eventually piecing together the elusive answer: A group of early settlers unwittingly destroyed the locust's sanctuaries just as the insect was experiencing a natural population crash. Drawing on historical accounts and modern science, Locust brings to life the cultural, economic, and political forces at work in America in the late-nineteenth century, even as it solves one of the greatest ecological mysteries of our time. |
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Page ix
... Humans Strike Back Politicians and Pests Lord of the Locusts The Triumvirate 101 8 The Locust Disappears 9 A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing? 139 Beautiful Theories and Ugly Facts Secrets in the Ice 181 12 The Mother Lode 209 Pioneers on Trial ...
... Humans Strike Back Politicians and Pests Lord of the Locusts The Triumvirate 101 8 The Locust Disappears 9 A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing? 139 Beautiful Theories and Ugly Facts Secrets in the Ice 181 12 The Mother Lode 209 Pioneers on Trial ...
Page 1
... human deaths from West Nile virus in the United States in 2002, ten times more Americans died as a result of talking on their cell phones while driving, and influenza killed more than a hundred times as many people. But in the ...
... human deaths from West Nile virus in the United States in 2002, ten times more Americans died as a result of talking on their cell phones while driving, and influenza killed more than a hundred times as many people. But in the ...
Page 3
... human's vital organs largely unscathed. For the settlers who avoided or survived the brutality of war and the ravages of disease, the arrival of locusts brought the frontier to the brink of the Third Horseman of the Apocalypse, famine ...
... human's vital organs largely unscathed. For the settlers who avoided or survived the brutality of war and the ravages of disease, the arrival of locusts brought the frontier to the brink of the Third Horseman of the Apocalypse, famine ...
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Page 12
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Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect that ... Jeffrey A. Lockwood No preview available - 2005 |
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