From Publishers Weekly
Few people think of flies, scorpions or potato bugs as weapons of war, but entomologist Lockwood (Grasshopper Dreaming
), winner of a Pushcart Prize and a James Burroughs Award, details in this fascinating study how creepy crawlies have been used against the enemy since antiquity. The Romans' siege of a desert fortress ended abruptly when buckets of scorpions were dumped on their heads. Many a medieval army catapulted beehives or hornets' nests over a castle's ramparts to drive out the defenders. The Vietcong used a version of this trick, setting off small explosives near huge beehives when American soldiers walked by. Lockwood tells how the Japanese used Chinese civilians as human guinea pigs in their program to weaponize plague and other diseases. And Lockwood explores charges by the North Koreans and Fidel Castro that America has called out insect troops on occasion as well. Fortunately, as the author points out, insects aren't very cooperative soldiers, and using them to deliver diseases is much easier said than done. Both science and military history buffs will learn much from Lockwood, a self-described skeptic with a sense of humor. 49 b&w illus. (Oct.)
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Insects have been recruited for war since biblical times and are currently scientifically bred for the nefarious purpose of spreading disease, according to Lockwood. Prior to the control exerted by medical doctors and entomologists, disease galloped well enough on its own, which Lockwood illustrates in accounts of armies felled by epidemics, such as several French forces of the Napoleonic period. In the twentieth century, most industrial nations have conducted research on the suitability of insects as deliberately deployed vectors of disease, with Lockwood going into extensive detail on biological weapons notoriously used by Japan in World War II. He is also animated by the proposition that some nations—particularly the U.S.—dropped infected bugs on China or Cuba while acknowledging the cold war propaganda temptation the Communist regimes of those countries had in claiming so. Concluding with the vulnerability of American agriculture to an insect-borne attack by terrorists, Lockwood offers a scientific history that leaves readers better informed, albeit with a severe case of the creepy-crawlies. --Gilbert Taylor