Pests in the City: Flies, Bedbugs, Cockroaches, and Rats
Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books
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Pests in the City: Flies, Bedbugs, Cockroaches, and Rats
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Narrated by:
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Sarah Mariza
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By:
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Dawn Day Biehler
About this listen
From tenements, to alleyways, to latrines, 20th-century American cities created spaces where pests flourished and people struggled for healthy living conditions. In Pests in the City, Dawn Day Biehler argues that the urban ecologies that supported pests were shaped not only by the physical features of cities, but also by social inequalities, housing policies, and ideas about domestic space.
Community activists and social reformers strived to control pests in cities such as Washington, DC, Chicago, Baltimore, New York, and Milwaukee. But such efforts fell short when authorities blamed families and neighborhood culture for infestations, rather than attacking racial segregation or urban disinvestment. Pest-control campaigns tended to target public or private spaces, but pests and pesticides moved readily across the porous boundaries between homes and neighborhoods.
This story of flies, bedbugs, cockroaches, and rats reveals that such creatures thrived on lax code enforcement and the marginalization of the poor, immigrants, and people of color. As Biehler shows, urban pests have remained a persistent problem at the intersection of public health, politics, and environmental justice, even amid promises of modernity and sustainability in American cities.
The book is published by University of Washington Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.
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Critic reviews
"This valuable book will stir readers' consciousness.... Highly recommended." (Choice)
“Deftly illustrates how pests continue to undermine aspirations for modern and healthy living conditions for all." (Science)
“Exemplary work of interdisciplinary history." (Journal of Interdisciplinary History)
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Hard not to be affected by this book
- By Neuron on 11-16-13
By: James Salzman
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Poison Spring
- The Secret History of Pollution and the EPA
- By: E. G. Vallianatos, McKay Jenkins
- Narrated by: Michael McConnahie
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
Imagine walking into a restaurant and finding chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides, or neonicotinoid insecticides listed in the description of your entree. They may not be printed in the menu, but many are in your food.These are a few of the literally millions of pounds of approved synthetic substances dumped into the environment every day, not just in the US but around the world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Frightening Wake Up Call!
- By Exec. Chef 'Special K' on 07-02-14
By: E. G. Vallianatos, and others
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The Fever
- Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years
- By: Sonia Shah
- Narrated by: Maha Chehlaoui
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 119
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 104
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 104
In recent years, malaria has emerged as a cause célèbre for voguish philanthropists. Bill Gates, Bono, and Laura Bush are only a few of the personalities who have lent their names - and opened their pocketbooks - in hopes of curing the disease. Still, in a time when every emergent disease inspires waves of panic, why aren’t we doing more to eradicate one of our oldest foes? And how does a parasitic disease that we’ve known how to prevent for more than a century still infect 500 million people every year, killing nearly 1 million of them?
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3 out of 5 stars
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Solid but not amazing account of malaria
- By S. Yates on 04-11-16
By: Sonia Shah
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The Big Necessity
- The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters
- By: Rose George
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 53
We prefer not to talk about it, but we should. Disease spread by waste kills more people worldwide every year than any other single cause of death. Even in America, nearly two million people have no access to an indoor toilet. Yet the subject remains unmentionable. Moving from the underground sewers of Paris, London, and New York (an infrastructure disaster waiting to happen) to an Indian slum where ten toilets are shared by 60,000 people, The Big Necessity breaks the silence, revealing everything that matters about how people do - and don't - deal with their own waste.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Utterly fascinating
- By Clayton on 03-31-19
By: Rose George
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The Well-Tempered City
- What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations, and Human Nature Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life
- By: Jonathan F. P. Rose
- Narrated by: Barry Abrams
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 62
Cities are birthplaces of civilization; centers of culture, trade, and progress; cauldrons of opportunity - and the home of 80 percent of the world's population by 2050. As the 21st century progresses, metropolitan areas will bear the brunt of global megatrends such as climate change, natural resource depletion, population growth, income inequality, mass migrations, and education and health disparities, among many others.
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3 out of 5 stars
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The best way to save the future is to look at the past
- By Kate on 10-01-22
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Pox
- An American History
- By: Michael Willrich
- Narrated by: K. Todd Freeman
- Length: 14 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4 out of 5 stars 50
At the turn of the last century, a smallpox epidemic swept the United States. The age-old disease spread swiftly through an increasingly interconnected American landscape: from southern plantations to the immigrant neighborhoods of northern cities to far-flung villages on the edges of the American empire. In Pox, historian Michael Willrich offers a gripping chronicle of how the nation's continent-wide fight against smallpox launched one of the most important civil liberties struggles of the 20th century.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Best book on smallpox
- By Chris M. White on 09-07-21
By: Michael Willrich
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Automating Inequality
- How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor
- By: Virginia Eubanks
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 133
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 107
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 110
Since the dawn of the digital age, decision-making in finance, politics, health, and human services has undergone revolutionary change. Today, automated systems control which neighborhoods get policed, which families attain needed resources, and who is investigated for fraud. While we all live under this new regime of data, the most invasive and punitive systems are aimed at the poor. In Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks systematically investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and working-class people in America.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Outstanding, Through, Well Researched Book!
- By LISA on 07-11-24
By: Virginia Eubanks
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Until Proven Safe
- The History and Future of Quarantine
- By: Nicola Twilley, Geoff Manaugh
- Narrated by: Kristen DiMercurio
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
Quarantine is our most powerful response to uncertainty: it means waiting to see if something hidden inside us will be revealed. It is also one of our most dangerous, operating through an assumption of guilt. In quarantine, we are considered infectious until proven safe. Until Proven Safe tracks the history and future of quarantine around the globe, chasing the story of emergency isolation through time and space - from the crumbling lazarettos of the Mediterranean, built to contain the Black Death, to an experimental Ebola unit in London, and from the hallways of the CDC.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent writing, timely and informative
- By MSE on 07-24-21
By: Nicola Twilley, and others
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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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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 111
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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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3 out of 5 stars
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Pretty good
- By Baz 12345 on 04-03-20
By: Mark Honigsbaum
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The Humane Economy
- How Innovators and Enlightened Consumers Are Transforming the Lives of Animals
- By: Wayne Pacelle
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 80
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 68
A major new exploration of the economics of animal exploitation and a practical road map for how we can use the marketplace to promote the welfare of all living creatures from the renowned animal-rights advocate Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States and New York Times best-selling author of The Bond.
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5 out of 5 stars
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For all lovers of animals--even the most sensitive
- By monique on 05-01-16
By: Wayne Pacelle
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The Moth in the Iron Lung
- A Biography of Polio
- By: Forrest Maready
- Narrated by: Forrest Maready
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 490
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 430
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Story5 out of 5 stars 428
A fascinating account of the world’s most famous disease - polio - told as you have never heard it before. Epidemics of paralysis began to rage in the early 1900s, seemingly out of nowhere. Doctors, parents, and health officials were at a loss to explain why this formerly unheard-of disease began paralyzing so many children. Why did this disease start to become such a horrible problem during the late 1800s? Why did it affect children more often than adults? Why was it originally called teething paralysis by mothers and their doctors?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Root Cause
- By Circlekay1 Gulfport MS on 10-24-19
By: Forrest Maready
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The Chain
- Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food
- By: Ted Genoways
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
Interviewing scores of line workers, union leaders, hog farmers, and local politicians and activists, Genoways reveals an industry pushed to its breaking point. Along the way, he exposes alarming new trends: sick or permanently disabled workers, abused animals, water and soil pollution, and mounting conflict between small towns and immigrant labor.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Writing, Performance and Content
- By Kevin S. Grail on 09-29-19
By: Ted Genoways
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Haiti After the Earthquake
- By: Paul Farmer
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep, Edoardo Ballerini, Edwidge Danticat
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 87
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Story4 out of 5 stars 72
On January 12, 2010, a major earthquake struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Hundreds of thousands of people died, and the greater part of the capital was demolished. Dr. Paul Farmer, U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti, who had worked in the country for nearly thirty years treating infectious diseases like tuberculosis and AIDS, and former President Bill Clinton, the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, had just begun to work on an extensive development plan to improve living conditions in Haiti.
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5 out of 5 stars
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If you read one book about Haiti make it this one
- By Bryan on 06-07-12
By: Paul Farmer
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Putin Country
- A Journey into the Real Russia
- By: Anne Garrels
- Narrated by: Anne Garrels
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 361
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 314
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 312
In Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia, Garrels crafts an intimate portrait of the nation's heartland. We meet ostentatious mafiosos, upwardly mobile professionals, impassioned activists, scheming taxi drivers with dark secrets, and beleaguered steel workers. We discover surprising subcultures, like the LGBT residents of Chelyablinsk who bravely endure an upsurge in homophobia fueled by Putin's rhetoric of Russian "moral superiority" yet still nurture a vibrant if clandestine community of their own.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Interesting dive into Russia today
- By Keith on 03-25-16
By: Anne Garrels
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Fast Food Nation
- The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
- By: Eric Schlosser
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,036
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 801
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Story4 out of 5 stars 800
To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar America. Fast Food Nation is a groundbreaking work of investigation and cultural history that may change the way America thinks about the way it eats.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Uncritical alarmist rant
- By Mark Freeman on 12-23-03
By: Eric Schlosser
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Progress
- Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future
- By: Johan Norberg
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 251
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 210
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 210
It's on the television, in the papers, and in our minds. Every day we're bludgeoned by news of how bad everything is - financial collapse, unemployment, growing poverty, environmental disasters, disease, hunger, war. But the rarely acknowledged reality is that our progress over the past few decades has been unprecedented. By almost any index you care to identify, things are markedly better now than they have ever been for almost everyone alive.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Global Uptrends That May Surprise You
- By Alexandra Hopkins on 09-22-17
By: Johan Norberg