No creature has directly touched the lives of more human beings than the mosquito. It has been a nuisance, a pollinator of plants and an angel of death all over the globe. And throughout history, much of our trouble with the mosquito has been caused by man himself. This is a study of one tiny insect, its devastating role in history and its growing threat to mankind. It tells the story of man's struggle to live with the mosquito, from the defeat of Sir Francis Drake's fleet, to the death of thousands of Frenchmen working on the Panama Canal, to the panic over West Nile Virus in New York in 2000.