Book excerpt: "Tells the darkly humorous story of the French colonial state's failed efforts to impose its vision of modernity upon the colonial city of Hanoi, Vietnam. This book offers a case study in the history of imperialism, highlighting the racialized economic inequalities of empire, colonization as a form of modernization, and industrial capitalism's creation of a radical power differential between "the West and the rest." On a deeper level, The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt will engage the contradictions unique to the French Third Republic's colonial "civilizing mission," the development of Vietnamese resistance to French rule, the history of disease, and aspects of environmental history"--