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Wicked Bugs
- The Louse That Conquered Napoleon’s Army and Other Diabolical Insects
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
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Editorial reviews
Award-winning author Amy Stewart's Wicked Bugs is a compendium of every little critter you never want to run into, with interesting history lessons thrown in along the way. Ever hear the one about the guy who committed suicide by Black Widow? How about the time Darwin got some beetle juice squirted into his mouth? Bonus: have enemies? This book will teach you how to coat an arrowhead with poison from various insects and other potentially toxic compounds.
From spiders to stink bugs, this book is not for the faint of heart. Want to have nightmares forever? Picture a locust swarm larger than the state of California. One of the most compelling chapters is one that focuses on zombie bugs, particularly the parasitic Jewel Wasp, which injects venom directly into the brain of a cockroach, then forces the roach to do its bidding.
Coleen Marlo handles the text with an encyclopedic accuracy, narrating swiftly through all manner of latin phylum, order, class, and species with the greatest of ease. In the end, you're thankful that she can keep it clinical, just for the sake of minimizing the sometimes graphic nature of the content.
A big part of the message here is that bugs are more powerful than we give them credit for. Stewart posits that lice, not the harsh Russian winter, may have been the downfall of Napoleon's army. She also implies that Formosan termites may have been responsible for breaking the levies and causing the widespread devastation of Hurricane Katrina. If you had any doubt about it before, you can put it to rest now; bugs really are wicked.
Creepy? Yes. Morbid? Sometimes. Informative? Most definitely. Gina Pensiero
Publisher's summary
In this darkly comical look at the sinister side of our relationship with the natural world, Stewart has tracked down over one hundred of our worst entomological foes - creatures that infest, infect, and generally wreak havoc on human affairs. From the world's most painful hornet, to the flies that transmit deadly diseases, to millipedes that stop traffic, to the Japanese beetles munching on your roses, Wicked Bugs delves into the extraordinary powers of many-legged creatures.
With wit, style, and exacting research, Stewart has uncovered the most terrifying and titillating stories of bugs gone wild. It's an A to Z of insect enemies, interspersed with sections that explore bugs with kinky sex lives, creatures lurking in the cupboard, militant ants, and phobias that feed our (sometimes) irrational responses to bugs.
Wicked Bugs is a fascinating mixture of history, science, murder, and intrigue that begins - but doesn't end - in your own backyard.
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According to veterinarian and journalist Mark Walters, we are contributing to - if not overtly causing - some of the scariest epidemics of our time. Through human stories and cutting-edge science, Walters explores the origins of seven diseases: Mad Cow Disease, HIV/AIDS, Salmonella DT104, Lyme Disease, Hantavirus, West Nile, and new strains of flu. He shows that they originate from manipulation of the environment, from emitting carbon and clear-cutting forests to feeding naturally herbivorous cows “recycled animal protein.”
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Really opens your eyes! A must read for middle school+
- By Jay on 08-05-20
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Fruitless Fall
- The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis
- By: Rowan Jacobsen
- Narrated by: Rowell Gormon
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Many people will remember that Rachel Carson predicted a silent spring, but she also warned of a fruitless fall, a time with no pollination and no fruit. The fruitless fall nearly became a reality when, in 2007, beekeepers watched 30 billion bees mysteriously die. And they continue to disappear. The remaining pollinators, essential to the cultivation of a third of American crops, are now trucked across the country and flown around the world, pushing them ever closer to collapse.
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Compulsory Reading - Share with Everyone!
- By Charles Koenen on 04-12-20
By: Rowan Jacobsen
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Poisons
- From Hemlock to Botox and the Killer Bean Calabar
- By: Peter Macinnis
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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A wide-ranging and provocative look - teeming with little-known facts and engaging stories - at a subject of the direst interest. Poisons permeate our world. They are in the environment, the workplace, the home. They are in food, our favorite whiskey, medicine, well water. They have been used to cure disease as well as incapacitate and kill. They smooth wrinkles, block pain, stimulate, and enhance athletic ability. In this entertaining and fact-filled audiobook, science writer Peter Macinnis considers poisons in all their aspects. He recounts stories of the celebrated poisoners in history and literature....
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#MyNonFictionAddiction
- By EinsteinzVice on 11-07-19
By: Peter Macinnis
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Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You
- A Lively Tour Through the Dark Side of the Natural World
- By: Dan Riskin
- Narrated by: Dan Riskin
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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It may be a wonderful world, but as Dan Riskin explains, it's also a dangerous, disturbing, and disgusting one. At every turn, it seems, living things are trying to eat us, poison us, use our bodies as their homes, or have us spread their eggs. In Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You, Riskin is our guide through the natural world at its most gloriously ruthless. Using the seven deadly sins as a road map, Riskin offers dozens of jaw-dropping examples that illuminate how brutal nature can truly be.
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Just a bunch of random animal behaviors.
- By Goddess on 05-18-23
By: Dan Riskin
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The Hidden Life of Trees
- What They Feel, How They Communicate - Discoveries from a Secret World
- By: Peter Wohlleben
- Narrated by: Mike Grady
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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How do trees live? Do they feel pain or have awareness of their surroundings? Research is now suggesting trees are capable of much more than we have ever known. In The Hidden Life of Trees, forester Peter Wohlleben puts groundbreaking scientific discoveries into a language everyone can relate to.
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Tree Hugger
- By Darwin8u on 04-18-19
By: Peter Wohlleben
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The Book of General Ignorance
- By: John Mitchinson, John Lloyd
- Narrated by: uncredited
- Length: 4 hrs and 20 mins
- Abridged
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Misconceptions, misunderstandings, and flawed facts finally get the heave-ho in this humorous, downright humiliating book of reeducation based on the phenomenal British best seller. Challenging what most of us assume to be verifiable truths in areas like history, literature, science, nature, and more, The Book of General Ignorance is a witty “gotcha” compendium of how little we actually know about anything. It’ll have you scratching your head wondering why we even bother to go to school.
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Interesting.
- By A. Hawkbird on 12-07-08
By: John Mitchinson, and others
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The Beekeeper's Lament
- How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America
- By: Hannah Nordhaus
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning journalist Hannah Nordhaus tells the remarkable story of John Miller, one of America's foremost migratory beekeepers, and the myriad and mysterious epidemics threatening American honeybee populations.
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From a beekeeper
- By Argos on 06-14-17
By: Hannah Nordhaus
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Mycophilia
- Revelations From the Weird World of Mushrooms
- By: Eugenia Bone
- Narrated by: Aimee Jolson
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In Mycophilia, accomplished food writer and cookbook author Eugenia Bone examines the role of fungi as exotic delicacy, curative, poison, and hallucinogen, and ultimately discovers that a greater understanding of fungi is key to facing many challenges of the 21st century.
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Absolutely awful, insufferable, racist author
- By Rs 🦇 on 11-25-19
By: Eugenia Bone
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Cannibalism
- By: Bill Schutt
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Eating one's own kind is a completely natural behavior in thousands of species, including humans. Throughout history we have engaged in cannibalism for reasons related to famine, burial rites, and medicine. Cannibalism has also been used as a form of terrorism and as the ultimate expression of filial piety. With unexpected wit and a wealth of knowledge, Bill Schutt takes us on a tour of the field, exploring exciting new avenues of research and investigating questions like why so many fish eat their offspring and some amphibians consume their mothers' skin.
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Strange Topic, Great Book, Loved It
- By Fenna on 06-15-17
By: Bill Schutt
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The Triumph of Seeds
- How Grains, Nuts, Kernels, Pulses & Pips Conquered the Plant Kingdom and Shaped Human History
- By: Thor Hanson
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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We live in a world of seeds. From our morning toast to the cotton in our clothes, they are quite literally the stuff and staff of life, supporting diets, economies, and civilizations around the globe. Just as the search for nutmeg and the humble peppercorn drove the Age of Discovery, so did coffee beans help fuel the Enlightenment and cottonseed help spark the Industrial Revolution. And from the fall of Rome to the Arab Spring, the fate of nations continues to hinge on the seeds of a Middle Eastern grass known as wheat.
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Delightfully simplistic!
- By Adrian on 03-30-16
By: Thor Hanson
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Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?
- The Epic Saga of the Bird That Powers Civilization
- By: Andrew Lawler
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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From ancient empires to modern economics, veteran journalist Andrew Lawler delivers a sweeping history of the animal that has been most crucial to the spread of civilization across the globe: the chicken. Queen Victoria was obsessed with it. Socrates' last words were about it. Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur made their scientific breakthroughs using it. Catholic popes, African shamans, Chinese philosophers, and Muslim mystics praised it.
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Never imagined the volume of bird trivia
- By Neuron on 11-04-18
By: Andrew Lawler
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The Wonder of Birds
- What They Tell Us About Ourselves, the World, and a Better Future
- By: Jim Robbins
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Birds, Jim Robbins posits, are our most vital connection to nature. They compel us to look to the skies, both literally and metaphorically, draw us out into nature to seek their beauty, and let us experience vicariously what it is like to be weightless. Birds have helped us in so many of our human endeavors: learning to fly, providing clothing and food, and helping us better understand the human brain and body.
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Stories about birds with something for everyone
- By D on 07-24-17
By: Jim Robbins
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The Pandemic Century
- One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris
- By: Mark Honigsbaum
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. From the Spanish flu to the 1924 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Los Angeles to the 1930 "parrot fever" pandemic, through the more recent SARS, Ebola, and Zika epidemics, the last one hundred years have been marked by a succession of unanticipated pandemic alarms.
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Pretty good
- By Baz 12345 on 04-03-20
By: Mark Honigsbaum
What listeners say about Wicked Bugs
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jim "The Impatient"
- 10-01-11
bunch of little articles
This is filled with lots of interesting and disturbing things about bugs. As I listen to it, I started getting itchy and stingy feelings. Insects are so different from us and live so different from us, it is like reading scary SCI Fi.
I think the book would have been better if she would have left out some bugs and spent more time with the more interesting bugs. This book is like a warm up band, it leaves you wanting more, unfortunately there is nothing to follow. The narrator sounds like she is speed reading, I don't know if that is her style or that is because of the way the book is written. Sometimes I got confused on when we had moved on to another bug or when we were going through the relatives of the last bug. Now I am going to look and see if there is an author who writes more in depth on the subject.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Paul
- 07-24-11
Too Many Bugs not Enough History
Though the introduction claims this book is NOT a reference guide or to be used as one, that is how it is written and how it reads. It reads like an arbitrarily put together reference guide on "bugs," (in the broad sense), written by a non-scientist/non-doctor.
The book is long and gives a survey of hundreds of "bugs," to the point where they blend together and get confusing. As one reviewer said it would be better on paper.
As a result the individual entries/chapters are short and often contain only basic information.
From the title "The Louse that Conquered Napoleon." I was expecting detailed and interesting histories highlighting 10 or 20 bugs, and how they have changed human history.
Instead the chapter on the louse was only a few minutes long and simply said that Napoleon's army may have been weakened by Louse and the diseases they carried, so that they were overcome easily by the Russian winter. Then she moves on to another bug.
The narration was great! And the information was interesting if a little repetitive, so I give it two stars for that. But in general this book is a short bug encyclopedia written by someone who professes not to be qualified for such an endeavor and so it is not worth it.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Paul
- 05-28-11
fascinating and creepy
This book was fascinating and well narrated. Lots of information on bugs and their habits and the diseases they carry. I started this book during a power outage due to severe thunderstorms. Quite creepy.
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12 people found this helpful
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- Elizabeth
- 06-10-12
Don't bother
This might be better as an actual book rather than an audio book. What captured me in the title was "the louse that conquered Napoleon's Army," and I was thinking there would be good and quirky info about that. Well, not really. Each chapter gives technical info on some kinds of bug, and there is a story to go with each one, but the scientific info far outweighs the quirky info. I can imagine reading this book in print and being able to skim through the scientific info to get to the quirky stuff, and getting through it all during a short trip to Starbucks. Sadly, in an audio, there is no skimming, or at least it's very difficult. Also, the chapters on the audio did not match up with actual chapters, so skipping ahead to the next chapter didn't work. I'm sorry I spent a credit on this. It was definitely not worth it.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Kim
- 11-07-13
Not enough....
I find the subject matter of this book fascinating and was looking forward to a good creepy bug book to haunt me for a bit. Unfortunately, it missed the mark two ways - 1) Not enough scientific detail - the descriptions of the insects and their behaviors were too brief. Fewer insects with more detail on each would've been better. 2) Not enough anecdotal or cultural references to make listening fun for more than a couple of hours. If there had been more "fun" stuff, I wouldn't have noticed the lack of educational content.
Although I was disappointed, I'm giving this selection 3 stars overall because I did enjoy sections of it, and it kept me interested enough to listen all the way through.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Suzn F
- 07-28-11
I'm scared and nauseated
Really don't listen to this while eating. And now I'm totally afraid to travel to anywhere south for fear of picking up a parasite, or to eat anywhere other than home and to be sure to cook my food thoroughly. Because with my luck I'll get a dreadful disease from a bug; Ms. Stewart happily points out. And if this isn't all enough, one would think at least think this an interesting book on bugs, but it really didn't hold my interest. It wasn't so much the content per se, I think. I felt as though it all moved along almost too quickly so that I wasn't able to take in what was being presented. Oh well.......
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5 people found this helpful
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- person
- 06-16-11
All fluff no meat
I kept waiting for the 'meat' in this book -- it is not in depth enough and written more as a coffee table book -- also the author should hire a better reader for her material.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Carole Shirreffs
- 07-02-12
Tick, tick tick, like The Tell Tale Heart by Poe.
Would you consider the audio edition of Wicked Bugs to be better than the print version?
Easier to understand.
Who was your favorite character and why?
The ticking is the Death Watch Beetle that taps on the rafters looking for a mate.
The only character is the narrator and she is very good. She has a precise voice that is soothing and easily understood. That is what is needed for this book This book is a compenduim of many of the wicked bugs known and their habits. It is wonderful to listen to but you might not want to leave the house, much less travel too far. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Bob
- 07-23-12
Wrong format for this book
An audio book is the wrong format for this book. It's essentially a list and short bio of various diseases and/or their vectors. An audio presentation is way too linear and cannot be indexed for what you want to see.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Cynthia
- 06-18-12
More Nightmares than Stephen King's Best
Would you listen to Wicked Bugs again? Why?
I'll definitely listen to this book again - so much information was packed into a very short read, I want to make sure I heard everything.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Was it the magots? The worms? The mind-controlling parasites? So hard to choose . . .
What does Coleen Marlo bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
This book, with the wrong reader, could have been dull, plodding, and full of dreadful mispronounciations. Coleen Marlo is a lively reader, and her ability to pronounce complex Latin names without hesitating is admirable. Definitely the right narrator for this book.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
I woke up in the middle of the night with a nightmare that I had bugs in my body. I wouldn't recommend listening to this right before bed.
Any additional comments?
I'm planning on ordering "Wicked Plants" by the same author.
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2 people found this helpful