The Mosquito Wars: A History of Mosquito Control in Florida.

The Mosquito Wars: A History of Mosquito Control in Florida. By Gordon Patterson. Foreword by Raymond Arsenault and Gary R. Mormino. Florida History and Culture Series. (Gainesville and other cities: University Press of Florida, c. 2004. Pp. xviii, 263. $55.00, ISBN 0-8130-2720-9.)

The Florida History and Culture series, edited by Raymond Arsenault and Gary R. Mormino, has proved, unfortunately, to be very uneven. Several of the volumes have been poorly written, incomplete, and filled with errors. With this volume, however, the series returns to the promise it offered at the beginning. The Mosquito Wars: A History of Mosquito Control in Florida shines in its clarity, its completeness, and in the story it tells.

Gordon Patterson has taken the rather eclectic subject of mosquito control and turned it into a riveting story--part mystery, part science, and filled with heroes and scoundrels. Not until you read this book do you realize how important the mosquito was to the development of Florida, or rather, how it limited development, spread disease, and literally drove some people crazy. There was a reason that southern Florida was referred to as the mosquito coast and that the nineteenth-century naval fleet stationed in Key West was known as the Mosquito Squadron.

When development began to take off in northern Florida in the late nineteenth century and the southern parts of the state in early twentieth century, publicity could deal with and even romanticize the water, alligators, and storms. Publicity could not put a good spin on the mosquito, the smudge pots, yellow fever, and mosquito netting. According to Patterson more than seventy-five species of mosquitoes could be found in Florida, but only a few cause serious health and safety problems. Most were just annoying.

In tracing the fact and fiction surrounding mosquito control, Patterson explains the role the mosquito has played throughout history, the struggle to identify the relationship between the mosquito and disease, particularly yellow fever and malaria, and how a lack of solid scientific knowledge led to some odd schemes to control the mosquito and open Florida to development.

Patterson, a professor at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, lives in one of the mosquito impact zones he so ably describes. He knows and has worked with the state and federal personnel in charge of mosquito control and research. He does a fine job of moving back and forth between the history and the science. Patterson is a very clear writer, enthusiastic about his subject.

There are a lot of esoteric books that appear in print every year. While The Mosquito Wars might appear to be such a book at first glance, it fills an important niche for historians of science, the environment, urban development, and Florida, as well as scientists and the general reader. We can only hope for more books like this in the Florida History and Culture series.

SANDRA L. NORMAN

Florida Atlantic University