Peeps

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Here are some books for reading more about parasites and rats and other icky things. Because you know you want to.

Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer (Touchstone, 2000)

Practically every parasite mentioned in this novel can be found in this very enjoyable book, plus many more. Without Parasite Rex, Peeps could not have been written. And it has pictures. But trust me, if you value your sleep, don’t look at the pictures.

Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan (Bloomsbury, 2004)

A beautifully written history of rats in New York City. As a bonus, there’s a field guide to rat-watching in Ryder’s Alley, a tiny little rodent heaven downtown. And yes, there really is a family called the Ryders, who I’m fairly sure are nice people and not really vampires.

Bitten: True Medical Stories of Bites and Stings by Pamela Nagami (St. Martins Press, 2004)

All you ever wanted to know about diseases that spread through bites and stings, and then some. Did you know that if you punch someone in the mouth, there’s a bacteria that can spread from their teeth to your knuckles and eat your hand away? Hitting people is bad.

The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (going strong since 1859)

The book that started it all. The key to understanding modern biology, from DNA to dinosaurs, and of all the great books of science, the most readable. And those stickers on textbooks, the ones stating that evolution is “only a theory”? Not true. When scientists use the word theory, they don’t mean “something that hasn’t been proven to be a fact.” They mean “a framework for understanding the facts.” So guess what, it’s a fact that human beings have evolved from other primates over the last five million years. (Like we share 98 percent of our DNA with chimps by accident?) But the framework we use to make sense of this fact is called evolutionary theory, Darwin’s awesome mash-up of several concepts: inherited traits, mutation, and survival of the fittest. So yes, we’re all distantly related to modern-day apes. Find that hard to believe? Dude, look around you.