A Plague of Rats and Rubbervines by Yvonne Baskin, Island Press (distributed in Britain by Eurospan (fax +44 (0)207 379 0609)), $25, ISBN 1559638761
STAR THISTLE and cheatgrass have taken over millions of hectares of American rangeland; avian malaria has wiped out much of the bird life of Hawaii; and comb jellies clog the Black Sea. The routes these invaders took are typical: the thistles arrived in alfalfa seeds brought in from Turkey, the mosquitoes came by boat in the 1850s, and the jellies, innocuous off the coast of Maine, hitched a ride in some of the 10 billion…
