History, ecology, and the politics of pests -- The promises of modern pest control -- Flies : agents of interconnection in progressive era cities -- Bedbugs : creatures of community in modernizing cities -- German cockroaches : permeable homes in the postwar era -- Norway rats : back-alley ecology in the chemical age -- Persistence and resistance in the age of ecology -- The ecology of injustice : rats in the civil rights era -- Integrating urban homes : cockroaches and survival -- Epilogue: the persistence and resurgence of bedbugs.
