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This book lets us peer into the world of microbes -- not as germs to be eradicated, but as invaluable parts of our lives -- allowing us to see how ubiquitous and vital microbes are: they sculpt our organs, defend us from disease, break down our food, educate our immune systems, guide our behavior, bombard our genomes with their genes, and grant us incredible abilities. While much of the prevailing discussion around the microbiome has focused on its implications for human health, Yong broadens this focus to the entire animal kingdom, prompting us to look at ourselves and our fellow animals in a new light: less as individuals and more as the interconnected, interdependent multitudes we are. I Contain Multitudes is the story of extraordinary partnerships between the familiar creatures of our world and those we never knew existed. It will change both our view of nature and our sense of where we belong in it. --… (more)
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Kind of like a mat of bacteria...
For anyone else reading the kindle edition - there are some
Microbes work equal miracles in other animals too, providing the ethereal light that disguises a squid as they hunt, ensuring that koalas are able to digest the unpalatable eucalyptus leaves and the weevil that uses bacteria to make its shell before killing them. The modern worldview of eliminating all microbes is causing as much harm as it is good; people nowdays have a revulsion of all things bacterial, hence the raft of cleaning products that are designed to scour all surfaces and hands clean of these unwanted intruders. However, as Yong successfully argues in this book that not only we might be missing a trick, but our bacterial ecosystem is essential for our survival. A good example of this is in hospitals; the modern view is that all windows have to be locked shut to keep rogue microbes out, but the effect of this is that patients sit in their beds stewing in a lethal mix of micro-organisms. This hazardous situation can be simply solved by opening a window, this allows the dispersal and dilution of the potentially lethal ones. Simple, but very effective.
It is a fascinating account of the unseen creatures that live within and all around us. Yong takes us on this journey through the microscope to discover the most recent research from scientists all round the world and tell us of the secrets that are being discovered about microbes. Some of the treatments being developed have the potential to make people’s so lives much better; one example is RePOOpulate – as unappealing as it sounds! However, this treatment has worked miracles with a 94% success rate and no side effects, a success rate not seen in many other cures. Yong writes with an engaging and eloquent style and makes the science in here really accessible. Well worth reading. 4.5 stars.
Luckily I got neither. Instead Yong's book was, from start to finish, utterly fascinating; never too
Microbes (bacteria, viruses, etc.) are everywhere. Everywhere. And bad news for the germaphobes: this is a good and necessary thing. Life on Earth simply could not exist without these microscopic machines. Plants and animals depend on bacteria for nutrients they can't get from food on their own, for turning on specific and necessary genes in the DNA, even for protecting them from other bacteria gone rogue.
Yong starts at the beginning of humans' awareness that there is life we cannot see. Typically these beginning chapters are the deadliest for me, as I get bored with the 'background' and impatient to get to the 'good stuff', but Yong made sure even the boring background was the 'good stuff'. I was never bored reading this book.
Left to my own devices, this review would go on forever, because there's just so much worth discussing, so I'm going to short-circuit myself and say this: I Contain Multitudes is a great book for learning how microbes help make all life possible; it's a 50/50 split, more or less, of information on microbe/human and microbes/other flora and fauna symbioses. It's easy to read, it's entertaining, and for at least myself, it was laugh out loud funny in one part. I finished with a much better understanding of the microbial world and my own digestive system (for now, I'm going to resist the temptation of probiotic supplements).
A very worth-while read and one I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to anyone with an interest.
From the fashionable discussion of our own gut to the hopes to find a natural defense against the fungus killing frogs, this book enlightened me and gives me a little hope that we will find ways to balance our internal and external ecosystems.
Books like these sometimes make me wish I'd understood better what the life of a scientist would be like, so that I might have made a more deliberate choice back when I was young. It would have been fun to work on the puzzles of nature described here
Ed Yong is a Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer who engages the subject of microbes with an acute interest in how life works. Like most sciences, microbiology can appear as a dry subject when approached through textbooks. As a good science writer, Yong instead seeks to convey this same material but engages the human heart at the same time. He succeeds in spades.
I learned many things from this book. Life’s origins lie squarely with microbes. Further, the sustenance of today’s life still lies with microbes. That is, without microbes, most of earthly life would fall apart. For some, they supply necessary amino acids to form proteins. As a unit called the microbiome, they populate human guts to aid in digestion. Mixtures in probiotic yogurts may not be refined and targeted yet, but the basic concept makes scientific sense. Retooling this microbiome to promote healthy outcomes (especially with GI diseases) will be a noteworthy advance of the 21st century.
I often look at the plant and animal worlds around me to survey the diversity of life. I see nature all around me. This book taught me to exercise my imagination more to engage the microbial world in this mix, too. Microbes are not evil; many, in fact, are helpful. Killing all microbes will not lead to cleanliness but to death for all. We humans need to learn to work with these lifeforms to promote life, and detailed insights supplied by writers like Yong will do just that. Knowledge of microbial life has recently exploded, and digging into its nuggets of wisdom can enrich your mind, soul, and body.
My expectations were very high for this book, and the results are mixed. It’s a real rollercoaster - some of the research on amazing things bacteria can do and the ways it affects the world are incredible, but they’re intermixed with sections about how this bacteria or that bacteria could help someone lose five pounds (which the book assumes must be “healthy”) or cause them to lose 5 pounds (which the book assumes must be “unhealthy”). I was hoping for something more critical of assumptions like that, but maybe this was more marketable.
The most interesting thing I learned about microbes from this book did have to do with animal diets, however. A lot of the food that animals consume (particularly plants) is not digested by the animal themselves, but by the bacteria that live inside them, which then produce smaller molecules that can be digested by the animal. In some cases (multi-chamber-stomached herbivores like cows) the animals even digest the bacteria themselves as their “food” after feeding them grass or hay. This is especially true of mammalian breast milk, which contains very large sugar molecules which can’t be digested by babies at all. The milk feeds the microbes, and the microbes feed the babies. Incredible stuff.