I Contain Multitudes

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.