I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
Written by Ed Yong
Narrated by Charlie Anson
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
New York Times Bestseller
New York Times Notable Book of 2016
NPR Great Read of 2016
Economist Best Books of 2016
Brain Pickings Best Science Books of 2016
Smithsonian Best Books about Science of 2016
Science Friday Best Science Book of 2016
A Mother Jones Notable Read of 2016
A Bill Gates “Gates Notes” Pick
MPR Best Books of 2016
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Books of 2016
Minnesota Star-Tribune Best of the Year
A Kirkus Best Book of the Year
A PW Best Book of the Year
Guardian Best of the Year
Times (London) Best of the Year
Joining the ranks of popular science classics like The Botany of Desire and The Selfish Gene, a groundbreaking, wondrously informative, and vastly entertaining examination of the most significant revolution in biology since Darwin—a “microbe’s-eye view” of the world that reveals a marvelous, radically reconceived picture of life on earth.
Every animal, whether human, squid, or wasp, is home to millions of bacteria and other microbes. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ed Yong, whose humor is as evident as his erudition, prompts us to look at ourselves and our animal companions in a new light—less as individuals and more as the interconnected, interdependent multitudes we assuredly are.
The microbes in our bodies are part of our immune systems and protect us from disease. In the deep oceans, mysterious creatures without mouths or guts depend on microbes for all their energy. Bacteria provide squid with invisibility cloaks, help beetles to bring down forests, and allow worms to cause diseases that afflict millions of people.
Many people think of microbes as germs to be eradicated, but those that live with us—the microbiome—build our bodies, protect our health, shape our identities, and grant us incredible abilities. In this astonishing book, Ed Yong takes us on a grand tour through our microbial partners, and introduces us to the scientists on the front lines of discovery. It will change both our view of nature and our sense of where we belong in it.
Ed Yong
Ed Yong is a science writer who reports for The Atlantic. For his coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, he won the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting, the George Polk Award for science reporting, and other honors. His first book, I Contain Multitudes, was a New York Times bestseller. He is based in Washington, DC.
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Reviews for I Contain Multitudes
539 ratings29 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fascinating information, especially within the context of our changing world.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is an excellent review of the popular topic, microbial symbiosis. Mr. Yong covers the symbiotic relationships between bacteria and their uni- and multicellular hosts, their microenvironments, and the various functions that the hosts and microbes have evolved to share or trade.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It made me want to learn more about this topic.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is so interesting and enjoyable! This is required reading for my class and being able to listen to this has made the material exciting!!!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fascinating! So much is covered in this book. One thing that really stuck with me was that the author does not recommend taking probiotics as they're rather ineffectual, at least for the products that we currently market.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A very interesting book. Definitely has it's slow moments, but overall a wonderfully in depth exploration of our understanding of the microbiome.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Great book full of highly interesting facts in an approachable rhetoric that neither dumbs down the material, nor makes it too dense for the average reader. The prose does tend to fractal off into biology rabbit-holes on certain topics but this is how bioscientists often communicate. Overall great read.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5For a person who knows next to nothing about microbes, this was a really interesting look into their impact in our lives, as well as into their possible future uses. I enjoyed the fact that this was written by a journalist, so the writing flowed easily and wasn't too dense, and even made me chuckle a couple of times.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A lively and insightful observation of what comprises our existance.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book was fantastic. As I biologist I thought I knew the microbes better but so much has changed in our understanding. What an inspirational & insightful work. Thanks!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Full of interesting stories and research that encourage the reader to view the microbial world in a different way. One of the best popular science books in recent years.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Interesting theme. Felt a little drag midway. Content could have been made shorter & more engaging.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wonderful science writing about a fascinating topic! I’m a big Ed Yong fan now, can’t wait for his next book, whatever it is.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A great read that enhances the reader’s view of our biosphere and the role of us humans within it. I only wish I could live long enough to experience the implementation of ideas surveyed in the final chapter.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great overview of the oft negelected relationship between the macro world we live in and the unseen micro world of bacteria, viruses, and fungi .
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Most interesting and overriding point: microbes are not the simple enemy but part of a complex community. 20th century scientific consensus and its popular formulations are far too simplistic. As an audio book a bit overwhelming - all those multitudes; would repay a 2nd go or to read in print.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I wasn't sure what I was going to get when I started this book; obviously microbes, but was it going to be dry and academic, or worse, evangelical 'omg-microbes-are-the-answer-to-everything!'? Luckily I got neither. Instead Yong's book was, from start to finish, utterly fascinating; never too arcane and never to simplistic, he found the sweet spot of science writing, creating an engaging narrative that never talks down to the reader. Anyone with an average vocabulary and an interest in the symbiotic world can pick up this book without feeling intimidated. 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.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The people who need to read this book most probably won't. Its best feature is that it explains (and explains... and explains some more) the incredible complexity of the microbiome, its inhabitants, its symbionts, its functioning, its dynamics and breathtakingly subtle balancing, rebalancing, and failures. This definitely NOT your "eat yogurt and cure all your ills"! The style is breezy, approachable, only occasionally tipping over into cuteness. Yong presents some fascinating stories; he knows how science works and can explain the exacting, lengthy, and sometimes tedious processes and experiments so you understand not only what they found, but how they figured it out. I was happy for all those scientists who, after the years spent probing the sexual apertures of fruit flies, finally get an affectionate and appreciative shout-out from Yong. There were parts that dragged, some repetition...it did at times read like a padded magazine piece. You need to be pretty interested in the topic to stick with it, but there's a lot of fascinating information, fun Latin terms, and a lovely history of van Leeuwenhoek's amazing microscopy. You will come away with a new appreciation for germs.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Really interesting and engaging.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It is sometimes difficult to follow along in audio with science book, but generally I was able to do so with this excellent investigation of all the living things that live in us and everything else. The narration was clear enough for me to understand the various scientific names for both the bad and good buggies (don't ask me to spell them, of course), and if I see an ebook of this on sale I may buy it for occasional review.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
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I fascinating book all about the microbes all around us and other creatures. I learned a lot in the process of reading this including how much we don't know about our microbiome. For instance, probiotic yoghurts don't work, well they don't repopulate our gut flora anyway, but scientists are successfully eliminating dengue fever by introducing a specific bacteria to the mosquitos.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You may think that we are just made from muscles, blood cells, bones and a fair bit of DNA, but in between the gaps are microbes. Billions and billions of them. There are the odd rogue ones, but most of them are useful and make up an essential element of our being. Without them we could not live. They help us in countless ways, sculpting our organs, protecting us from disease and feeding and nourishing us; our gut contains a complete ecosystem that ensure that we extract all the energy we need.
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. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5We are a world in ourselves. This is an amazing look at the world of life that keeps our bodies living.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a fascinating look at what we currently know about how animals and plants interact with the microbes all around us. This is still a very young field, and there is a lot to learn. Yong writes with clarity and humor, so this is a very enjoyable and enlightening read.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Lots of interesting facts but in such a big pile I stopped absorbing them after a while.
Kind of like a mat of bacteria... - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Always interesting and occasionally elegant or laugh-out-loud funny. Highly recommended.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A very readable summary of the most recent studies into the interactions of microbes with the rest of life illustrating their ubiquitous nature, often benefitting, sometimes harming.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is an excellent book. It does a great job of addressing a fast-evolving field and is honest about the limitations of our knowledge of the topic. I was very impressed. (I also really appreciated Yong's visit to Chicago at the end!)For anyone else reading the kindle edition - there are some photos at the end of the book that weren't linked to anywhere else, so make sure you catch those.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5As a biologist who studies multicellular organisms, and avoided microbiology wherever possible, this is something of a revelation. Yong makes a good case for treating individuals as walking communities or ecosystems; evolutionary biology and medicine need to keep this in mind.