In the late 1860s, American businessmen had wanted to set up an American silk industry. American scientists had wanted to prove science solved all. And some bug scientists had thought the only good bug was a dead one, except for honeybees, insects from which red dye and shellac were respectively made, lady beetles, and silkworms. One visiting scientist in particular, E Leopold Trouvelot, had tried to bring business and science together, by looking for a good silk-making worm. He considered that of the gypsy moth. These imported moths probably escaped, during the windy spring of 1869, from holes in the nettings with which he covered his back yard, open air moth study in Medford.

Massachusetts had been a state of white pine in the south and mixed fir and spruce in the north. But the state’s softwoods had been more than 80% cleared, for farming or for commercial logging. Hardwoods had grown up in some places. The most common hardwood had become the thicker-barked, shade- and poor soil-tolerant, more fire-resistant oak. And that was the gypsy moth’s favorite food, along with the state’s orchard fruits and field crops. So gypsy moths were able to eat their way to plague proportions, what with mild winters killing very few of their eggs and what with no natural controls, such as native diseases, enemies and parasites.

Citizens couldn’t stop the moths from eating almost everything green in sight. So legislators and scientists got together to pay for and set up an all-out bug war. It became the model for all other later anti-insect campaigns. How could this be since this first “eradication” fell way far short of its goal of wiping out the gypsy moth? The scientific community closed ranks with the report’s authors, who blamed the state legislature for stopping funding and citizens for getting in the way. And yet eradication by hazardous materials was as costly and dangerous as it was unsuccessful. For example, each gypsy moth caterpillar needed 12 times the poisonous dose fatal to an adult human. That meant chemically drenched neighborhoods, contaminated soil and water supply, damaged green things, dead honeybees, and sick people.

Despite all this, the gypsy moth made Massachusetts and the rest of the United States its new home. It learned how to become part of the American woodwork. In comparison and according to the author, we may have learned nothing other than the only way to stop problem insects is disease. For in 1989 the fungus Entomophaga maimaiga fought and won the good fight against gypsy moths trying to take over Connecticut.
Rating: 5 / 5

The grand machismo of the men of the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Victorian Era, led them to boast of things they had not yet accomplished, yet felt they could. The story of the gypsy moth outbreak in Massachusetts and the men who tried to stop it is full of just such braggadocio.

For Massachusetts residents, the story hits home directly. For those folks interested in birds, the surprise inclusion of Edward Howe Forbush as the street level general in the war on the moth is surprsing and revealing. And for armchair entomologists, well, it doesn’t get any better than this. Descriptions of the moth larvae invading homes, sliding down chimneys and through windows will make the most steadfast skin crawl.

As other reviewers have stated, the author certainly packs every detail possible into the book. But that does not take away from the story for one truly interested in the tale.
Rating: 5 / 5