The Compleat Cockroach

STEP INTO A WORLD THAT, UNTIL NOW, YOU'VE ONLY STEPPED ON

It's all part of The Compleat Cockroach: A Comprehensive Guide to the Most Despised (and Least Understood) Creature on Earth, published by Ten Speed Press of Berkeley, California.

Lavishly illustrated with line drawings, movie posters, photos, and artwork, The Compleat Cockroach provides an unforgettable introduction to the insect so many people love to loathe:

Cockroach Biology: Where the world's 4,000 roach species live, what they eat, and why some have chosen to make our homes their homes.

Cockroach Behavior: How roaches sing for their supper, sleep upside down, and battle each other, plus all the details of their steamy love lives.

Cockroach Control: Effective strategies for keeping roaches at bay-- an arsenal of environmentally friendly alternatives to the atomic bomb.

Cockroach Culture: from Aristophanes to Archy, Kafka's The Metamorphosis to MTV-- the rich legacy of roaches in song, dance, and contemporary cuisine.

Over the course of 196 pages, readers of The Compleat Cockroach are treated to:
A day at Roachhill Downs, site of the roach races at Purdue University
An official tour of the Cockroach Hall of Fame
An encounter with the world's biggest cockroach
The history of the 1960s craze, The Roach Dance

Profiles of prominent cockroaches-- stowaways on Spanish galleons, hitchhikers aboard the Apollo XII lunar module, inhabitants of forests and fields, and invaders of kitchens, bedrooms and baths ... and much, much, more.

David George Gordon is an award-winning nature writer, he's the author of ten books on North American wildlife. His work has appeared in Outside, Wildlife Conservation, Reader's Digest and USA Today. The New York Times called his Field Guide to the Slug "gripping," citing its "almost breathtaking" account of snail sex.

Gordon has served as a staff biologist at the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma, Washington, and the world-famous Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. As an author and public speaker, he has entertained audiences throughout the Northwestern United States and Canada, extolling the virtues of such exotic fauna as Bigfoot, the banana slug and the geoduck-- the world's largest burrowing clam.

The Compleat Cockroach is priced at IJ11.95 (U.S. dollars). To purchase a copy, contact your local bookseller (in the United Kingdom the book is distributed by Airlift Books). Or order directly from Ten Speed Press, P.O. Box 7123, Berkeley, California 94707 telephone: (510) 559-1600.

David George Gordon can be reached at his office in Port Townsend, Washington, at (360) 385-5063 (e-mail dggordon@olympus.net)

"many a cockroach believes himself as beautiful as a butterfly" "have a heart o have a heart and let them dream on" -- archy

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