MY TWO NEW FAVOURITE SCIENCE BOOKS
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As a writer of science fiction and a de facto ambassador for science, I consider it a duty to share my discoveries when I come across must-read books about science. And two of my newest favourites come from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ed Yong. Yong has written science articles for top magazines for years, but then put his gifts and experience to work on book-length projects beginning in 2016 with I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life followed in 2022 by An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us. Both are remarkable achievements.
Since I Contain Multitudes has been included on more than a dozen prominent “notable books” or “best of the year” lists, my opinion may not mean a great deal, but I still want to encourage lovers of science as strongly as I can to read this book. First, it’s written the way I wish all popular science books were written: with terrific enthusiasm, unimpeachable diligence and scholarship, impeccable balance, and humour. Second, it’s collection of scientific findings is mind-blowing—you’ll learn not only that bacteria, viruses, and archaea colonize every square centimeter of our planet (and ourselves) in unimaginable numbers, but also that bacteria are brilliantly effective in producing antibacterial agents. You’ll discover wasps that spread an antibiotic paste over the eggs they lay; how mammalian mothers (including humans) provide lifetime protection to their babies via natural births and breast milk; how much we need good bacteria to help our bodies function normally, and why; and how pests like wasps and mosquitoes can be used as disease-fighters thanks to their microbiome (the collection of microbes living on and within them).
To me, two of the most important takeaways of I Contain Multitudes are that 1) microbes don’t automatically mean disease—there are many more necessary or neutral microbes than there are pathogens that do us harm; and 2) when we wipe out existing colonies of (mostly harmless) microbes with antibiotics and antimicrobial chemicals, we’re opening up niches for the nearest opportunistic microbes to take their place, very likely harmful ones (in hospitals, that’s almost a certainty). So, over-sterilizing ourselves and our environments is a bad strategy.
If you’re easily grossed-out, there is a significant “ick” factor in much of what Yong relates, but it’s information very much worth knowing. And I think it’s safe to say that you’ll never look at the world and the people around you in the same way again!
As outstanding as I Contain Mutitudes is, I like An Immense World even better ( I read it first and recently read it a second time).
What an astonishing book! This time Ed Yong takes us on a tour of the senses—not just the five we usually experience, but all the incredible ways animals, fish, birds, and insects perceive the world around us. With notes and a bibliography that runs to dozens of pages, it’s clear how Yong spent the Covid pandemic! Yet he delivers these reams of research in prose that’s always clear and easy to digest, leading the reader from one amazing discovery to another with the flow of a compelling novel. You’ll be gobsmacked by all the things you never knew about vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. But then there’s echolocation, electrolocation, magnetic fields and more.
There are startling revelations on every page—so much so that you’ll feel compelled to share them (my wife insists I’ll be the ‘pride of the old folks home’ passing on bits of trivia. I can only wish I could retain half of all the fascinating stuff to be found here.)
Bravo, Ed Yong! Thanks for helping to illuminate the world.
