I Contain Multitudes

Quick read on the world that lives on and in us. Most interesting fact I learned is that we have a literal battalion of VIRUSES that protect us from invading bacteria. Really does make you think twice about how much and how obsessively we clean and if we aren't maybe way better off just not...

Open your windows to let all the microbes in, and let's join the coprophagy club!
Honestly, the most surprising thing I learned from this is that humanity wouldn't immediately collapse if suddenly all microbes would disappear.

If I had taken a pretest on what I knew about microbes before I read this book, I wouldn't have been able to say much. I would say that most microbes I knew about were bad, destructive if not controlled in humans. I would say that I'd heard a bit of fuss about a few good microbes, most of which were involved in human digestion. And that's about it.

I didn't know much about microbes before I read this book, and most of what I knew (or thought I knew) was wrong.

What I learned from this book (and please correct me in the comments if I am saying this wrong) is that microbes work with living animals and plants in lots of different ways and in all or almost all living animals and plants. Microbes do things for the animals and plants that the animals and plants can't do for themselves, and, in return, the animals and plants do things for the microbes that they can't do for themselves. Each living animal and plant is an enormous ecosystem composed of millions of interactions between microbes and each living thing. Wiping out microbes in living things can also destroy the living things themselves.

Ed Yong's book is full of specific examples of corals and squids and mosquitoes and more and their interactions with specific microbes that live with these living things, and every story is told with cleverness and humor.

I'm no scientist, but I listened to this audiobook avidly and I found it wildly compelling.

If you're interested in learning more broadly about the microbiome and symbionts in nature (not just humans), start here. Ed Yong has a way of telling the story with an engagement that feels like he's having a blast; the reader is along for the ride. I thoroughly enjoyed this, and it's always a good sign when there's at least an inch worth of end notes/bibliography.

I would say this is an averagely enjoyable read for me. I found it hard to get through mostly because of the inundation of species names. I enjoyed the topic and when I could get on a roll I could cover a chapter in a sitting but this book took a long time to get through. If you are not at least slightly interested in the topic I would say it is a bit too much for a casual read through.

Fun topic though and I now can't help but look at things differently.

Recommended from Bill Gates (gatesnotes.com)A perfect follow-up to [b:The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer 7170627 The Emperor of All Maladies A Biography of Cancer Siddhartha Mukherjee https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1280771091s/7170627.jpg 7580942]! Yong argues that we are far more than our DNA. This book clearly outlines the development of microbes, our understanding of their role in the modern world and specifically in our gut, and the potential future of leveraging microbes for specialized medical treatment. There's a huge stigma that bacteria=bugs=bad and that anti-bacterial _____ are some of the greatest developments of modern society. In reality, only a very small percentage of bacteria are pathogens and the rest are either beneficial to humans or other players in the global ecosystem. Crazy enough, I was able to meet a microbiologist (shoutout to Anneka!) in addition to a geneticist recently. For some reason, they found my “for fun” books to be peculiar choices. :P My greatest takeaway from this book is the importance of studying other organisms (animals, plants, and microorganisms) so that we can better understand ourselves. The human genome is incredibly complex by itself, but when you also consider that there are ~100 trillion bacteria living in/on an average human, it becomes evident that simplifying the study of the human body to a single genome is a gross simplification. Humans (and all animals) have symbiotic relationships with the majority of the bacteria we interact with every day - and these are essential to our survival.I'd highly recommend this book to anyone open to challenging the misconceptions society has about germs and bacteria.

So you think microbes are bad? Or that there are good microbes and the bad ones? Or that there is no ideas for your upcoming fantasy novel in recent science discoveries? Or that there is nothing particularly new discovered in last decades about how human bodies work? Or that best way to deal with bacteria is to have it all sterilized as often as possible?

Well this book in very entertaining way will prove you wrong. Read it if you like interesting stories about animal world too. I didn't like that part though. But other than that it's book about the science in it's motion, the newest discoveries. Weird how much we still don't know. Entertaining. Probably this will be common sense after some decades. And a lot of opportunities to deal with conditions previously there was no solution to. (What? Autism might be caused from bacteria? Crazy.) And this book delivers just that. Crazy real science.

An interesting book about an unknown world. The writing is lively, understandable, sometimes funny and a little bit silly.