The Cockroach Papers: A Compendium of History and Lore

What has six legs, skulks around late at night, and likes to sniff out the hidden crevices, the dank corners, and the dark recesses? The cockroach, of course. The cockroach is a bug of great design. Most of its contemporaries from the Carboniferous period -- around 300 million B.C. -- are extinct, but cockroaches live on reproducing inside our walls and traveling the world as stowaways aboard ships. In The Cockroach Papers, readers learn more than they ever wanted to know about this nasty little pest. It features a mix of anecdotal material from people who have had memorable (mostly nightmarish) interactions with roaches and facts about the lives of roaches -- from where they live and how they mate to their much-awaited dying days.

Richard Schweid is the author of three books on such diverse subjects as hot peppers and Cajuns, catfish farmers in the Mississippi Delta, and Barcelona, Spain, where he lives.