I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

This is a fine book about microbial evolution. I makes the case for the thesis that microbes are ubiquitous, important and understudied. It looks at the relationship between mucrobes and humans, but also delves into the relstionships between microbes and many other animals. Plants and fungi were not so well represented. The book is accessible and well-written. A slight issue was some youthful wow factor. The author sometimes enthused about things that I thought were old hat. My other main criticisms are errors of omission. I usually feel pretty mean-spirited criticing books for what is not in them, but it sometimes needs doing. The book's focus on microbes - but it also discusses a number of topics related to symbiology - since microbes are often animal symbionts. However, these discussions always revolved around microbial examples.For example the obesity epidemic was discussed, while the smoking epidemic was not. The reason, obesity is partly-mediated by microbial symbionts (candida, etc) - while smoking involves a symbiosis between humans and a plant. With obesity, microbes are involved, but so are cultural symbionts - memes. In the case of the obseity epidemic it is hard to have a sensible discussion without considering which aspects are influenced by memes and which involves genes in humans and plants and microbes. Here the author focuses on the influence of microbes and treatments involving fecal transplants. In this and some other cases, the microbial focus starts to look blinkered. I guess I was more interested in the symbiology than the microbes.Overall, the book had a fairly reasonable balance between theory and examples, but I still wanted more theory - and fewer examples. The book was a lot like a microbial natural history program. Natural history programs are often short on theory. To give an example, the book discusses the hypothesis that symbionts make their hosts more sociable - to spread between them better when they engage in social contact. This is in my opinion, a big and important hypothesis. However the book only gives it one short paragraph. I wanted more.Having criticized a but, this is still a great book on microbes. I has got to be rated pretty high on the list of popular science books on the topic. Good job. Ed has some related videos and articles online if you want a trailer. Many of these are also worthwhile. I plan to follow Ed Yong's work in the future.

Ed Yong's first book is a fantastic foray into the unseen world of bacteria: how they colonise us, cohabitate with us, and even control us. Though they go largely unseen, they are critical for almost all life on earth.A confession: I've been a fan of Ed Yong's writing for a while. A few years back, when I was considering science journalism myself, I found his work over at Not Exactly Rocket Science. It was (and is) an informative and inspirational blog that tackles complicated science well and with great humour. So when I saw that he had released a book, I bought it straight away. For full price. If you know me, that's almost a recommendation in itself.But while it might seem like I was always destined to have enjoyed this book, I was still pleasantly surprised with how good a read it was. Yong shares the scientist's love of an elegant experiment, and the journalist's love of a great narrative hook; these two loves pleasingly intersect in enjoyable narratives that are compelling while being lucid and well-researched. This is the sort of science writing that doesn't shy away from complexity, but is written well enough that the average lay person could understand - it tackles the difficult task of addressing multiple audiences in the same volume well. A scientifically-minded reader will be sated by the level of detail without being bored by remedial repetition.Mainly, I enjoyed this book because Yong paints bacteria with a complete palette, describing friends, competitors and sometimes foes. This makes it a compelling read, as most often popular science literature refers to bacteria in a binary sense: 'good' bacteria or 'bad' bacteria, an adversarial fairy tale which undercuts the full spectrum occupied by the thousands of bacterial species that make our body their home. The subtlety and nuance in this book is refreshing, and I wish more writers took the time to do the subject justice.Highly recommended.

Ed Yong's two books are very well written and entertaining. He explores the world within us and the world around us in an enchanting, easy to read way. His other book is An Immense World.

I absolutely loved this book, it went into so much detail and teaches you a lot I’ve now read it twice since buying

Cette livre change ta Vue sur les microbes

Good insights about microbes , animals,etc. Apart from increasing knowledge it also influences our thinking about microbes, poop and sanitation

un libro davvero interessante. ho preso anche una copia per la mia nipote. pieno delle storie sorprendenti sulle nostre esistenza - no, non siamo mai soli :) e sul mondo che ci circonda. consiglio