Locust

In 1876, the U.S. Congress declared the locust “the single greatest impediment

to the settlement of the country between Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains.”

Throughout the nineteenth century, swarms of locusts regularly swept across

the American continent, turning noon into dusk, devastating farm communities,

and bringing trains to a halt. The outbreaks subsided in the 1890s, and then,

suddenly—and mysteriously—the Rocky Mountain locust vanished. A century later,

entomologist Jeffrey Lockwood vowed to discover why. _Locust_ is the story of

how one insect shaped the history of the western United States. A compelling

personal narrative drawing on historical accounts and modern science, this

beautifully written book brings to life the cultural, economic, and political

forces at work in America in the late nineteenth century, even as it solves

one of the greatest extinction mysteries of our time.