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I Contain Multitudes, by Ed Yong
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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. 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.
- Brand: imusti
- Published on: 2016-09-01
- Original language: English
- Dimensions: 9.45" h x 1.38" w x 6.38" l, 1.28 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- VINTAGE
Review
“In I Contain Multitudes, Yong synthesizes literally hundreds and hundreds of papers, but he never overwhelms you with the science. He just keeps imparting one surprising, fascinating insight after the next. I Contain Multitudes is science journalism at its best.” (Bill Gates)
“[An] excellent and vivid introduction to our microbiota. . . . infectiously enthusiastic.” (New York Times Book Review)
“A science journalist’s first book is an excellent, vivid introduction to the all-enveloping realm of our secret sharers.” (New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice)
“Offer[s] engrossing-and gross-details about how an invisible world shapes our species…Mr. Yong’s book lives up to its title, containing multitudes of facts presented in graceful, accessible prose….The author wonderfully turns to the humanities again and again to enrich the book’s scientific detail…And he’s funny.” (Wall Street Journal)
“Not since de Kruif’s classic, “Microbe Hunters,’’ has this invisible world been brought so vividly to life… Yong’s curiosity and humor made me smile and even laugh out loud, much to my husband’s surprise. By the end of the book his sense of wonder for microbes was, well, infectious.” (Boston Globe)
“For a lesser writer, the temptation to oversimplify the science or to sex up unwarranted conclusions might have proved irresistible. Mr Yong expertly avoids these pitfalls…. I Contain Multitudes bowls along wonderfully without it. His hero, Sir David [Attenborough], would surely approve.” (The Economist)
“Beautifully written. . . . Yong - who like Carl Zimmer belongs to the highest tier of science journalists at work today - weaves revelatory anecdotes and cutting-edge reporting into an elegant, illuminating page-turner.” (Minneapolis Star Tribune)
“Beautiful, smart, and sometimes shocking.” (Wired)
“Masterful . . . a tale that shifts our personal cosmology and compels us to look anew at the world (The Guardian)
“A delightful, witty book. Yong vividly describes the intricate alliances forged by microbes with every other organism on the planet (Science)
“[Yong’s] enthusiasm and wonder are propulsive. While [he] acknowledges that the questions outnumber the answers in this relatively nascent field, he thrills to the potential inherent in what scientists have already learned about microbes’ astonishing powers. As a result, so do we.” (The Week)
“The strong narrative, rigorous reporting and fluid writing make I Contain Multitudes one of the most essential science books of the year. Yong’s wit, and endearing inability to pass up an opportunity for wordplay, are just a couple of the many bonuses that make it enjoyable, too.” (Philly Voice)
“Fascinating and elegantly written. . . . Yong peels the veneer of the visible to reveal the astonishing complexity of life thriving beneath and within the crude confines of our perception. . . . masterful [and] intensely interesting.” (Brainpickings)
“An exceptionally informative, beautifully written book that will profoundly shift one’s sense of self to that of symbiotic multitudes.” (Kirkus, Starred Review)
“[A] informative and infectiously readable book.” (Cell)
“Bottom line: don’t hate or fear the microbial world within you. Appreciate its wonders. After all, they are more than half of you.” (Booklist, Starred Review)
“Yong makes a superb case for his position by interviewing numerous scientists and presenting their fascinating work in an accessible and persuasive fashion.” (Publishers Weekly, Starred Review)
“Readable and entertaining. . . . Highly recommended for general science readers interested in the complicated relationships between microbes and their hosts.” (Library Journal)
“Yong writes like Sagan did, with humor and a deep understanding of science. The incredible partnerships these microbes have with all of us, the weird facts that enlighten our knowledge, our own view of nature: they all will change once we understand these partnerships better.” (GeekDad)
“Ed Yong’s I Contain Multitudes is wonderful. Deeply strange, true, funny, beautifully written.” (William Gibson)
“Ed Yong is one of our finest young explainers of science-wicked smart, broadly informed, sly, savvy, so illuminating. And this is an encyclopedia of fascinations-a teeming intellectual ecosystem, a keen book on the intricacies of the microbiome and more.” (David Quammen, author of Spillover)
“I Contain Multitudes changes you the way all great science writing does. You become disoriented, looking at the world around you in a new way. With vivid tales and graceful explanations, Ed Yong reveals how the living things we see around us are wildly complex collectives.” (Carl Zimmer, author of Parasite Rex)
“Beyond fascinating. An amazing book. It’ll change the way you think about the world. It’ll change who you think you are.” (Helen Macdonald, author of H Is for Hawk)
Ed Yong has written a riveting account of the microbes that make the world work. I Contain Multitudes will change the way you look at yourself—and just about everything else.” (Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction)
“This compelling and beautifully written book will change the way people look at the world around, and within, them. Certainly among the best books in an increasingly crowded field and written with a true passion for and understanding of the microbiome.” (Rob Knight, author of Follow Your Gut and professor at University of California, San Diego)
“Yong has captured the essence of this exciting field, expressing the enthusiasm and wonder that the scientific community feels when working with the microbiome.” (Professor Jack Gilbert, University of Chicago)
“A marvelous book! Ed Yong’s brilliant gift for storytelling and precise writing about science converge in I Contain Multitudes to make the invisible and tiny both visible and mighty. A unique, entertaining, and smart read.” (Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach Trilogy)
“A must-read for the curious and science-minded, Yong’s book helps guide us through this exciting landscape.” (Bookpage)
From the Back Cover
A groundbreaking, marvelously informative “microbe’s-eye view” of the world that reveals a radically reconceived picture of life on earth.
For most of human existence, microbes were hidden, visible only through the illnesses they caused. When they finally surfaced in biological studies, they were cast as rogues. Only recently have they immigrated from the neglected fringes of biology to its center. Even today, many people think of microbes as germs to be eradicated, but those that live with us—the microbiome—are invaluable parts of our lives.
I Contain Multitudes lets us peer into that world for the first time, 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, giving us a grander view of life.
With humor and erudition, Ed Yong prompts us to look at ourselves and our fellow animals in a new light: less as individuals and more as the interconnected, interdependent multitudes we assuredly are. When we look at the animal kingdom through a microbial lens, even the most familiar parts of our lives take on a striking new air. We learn the secret, invisible, and wondrous biology behind the corals that construct mighty reefs, the glowing squid that can help us understand the bacteria in our own guts, the beetles that bring down forests, the disease-fighting mosquitoes engineered in Australia, and the ingredients in breast milk that evolved to nourish a baby’s first microbes. We see how humans are disrupting these partnerships and how scientists are now manipulating them to our advantage. We see, as William Blake wrote, the world in a grain of sand.
I Contain Multitudes is the story of these 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.
About the Author
Ed Yong is an award-winning science writer on the staff of the Atlantic. His blog Not Exactly Rocket Science is hosted by National Geographic, and his work has appeared in The New Yorker, Wired, the New York Times, Nature, New Scientist, Scientific American, the Guardian, the Times, Discover, Slate, and other publications. He lives in London and Washington DC.
Most helpful customer reviews
64 of 65 people found the following review helpful.
Accessible and important, but ponderous
By Amazon Customer
With the growing Zika and Dengue threats, understanding how microbes and their hosts interact is vital. Not everyone can make it through this long and detailed account, but it is worth the effort. We will all face questions that are addressed in this book - - from whether to pay extra for heavily advertised probiotics to whether or not to support the release of wolbachia-infected mosquitoes in our own backyards to stop the spread of deadly diseases.
Without requiring specialist knowledge or vocabulary, the author introduces the complex concepts behind the recent revolution in understanding of microbes' role in health, evolution, ecology, and culture.
A few years ago, before I retired from a medical practice in non-tropical Minneapolis, I had a patient whose unusual rash was probably caused by an African parasitic worm that hosts a bacterium which allows the worm to live inside its human host. By chance, I had just seen an article on treating his condition by giving antibiotics to eliminate the bacterium, thus allowing the patient's immune system to kill the worms. In an increasingly globalized world, the more people acquire the background to be able to absorb information like that and recall it when it becomes relevant, the better.
Fortunately, the reader is rewarded with tidbits of levity along the way - - the name of a product aimed at restoring healthy digestive system microbes, for instance: "rePOOPulate."
There's no cheerleading for every trendy "natural" "probiotic" cure under the sun. Nature is revealed as indifferent to our personal goals - - and capable of producing undesired results when we try to tamper with it. What we find here instead is a very balanced look at what has been learned and tried, what has worked and what has failed, and where we may be going.
124 of 133 people found the following review helpful.
Portrait of the human as an entangled bank
By Ashutosh S. Jogalekar
It’s time we became friends with microbes. And not just with them but with their very idea, because it’s likely going to be crucial to our lives on this planet and beyond. For a long time most humans have regarded bacteria as a nuisance. This is because we become aware of them only when something goes wrong, only when they cause diseases like tuberculosis and diarrhea. But as Ed Yong reveals in this sweeping, exciting tour of biology, ecology and medicine which is pregnant with possibility, the vast majority of microbes help us in ways which we cannot possibly fathom, which permeate not just our existence but that of every single other life form on our planet. The knowledge that this microbial universe is uncovering holds tantalizing clues to treating diseases, changing how we eat and live and potentially effecting a philosophical upheaval in our view of our relationship with each other and with the rest of life.
Yong’s book shines in three ways. Firstly it’s not just a book about the much heralded ‘microbiome’ – the densely populated and ubiquitous universe of bacteria which lives on and within us and which rivals our cells in terms of numbers – but it’s about the much larger universe of microbes in all its guises. Yong dispels many misconceptions, such as the blanket statements that bacteria are good or bad for us, or that antibiotics are always good or bad for us. His narrative sweeps over vast landscape, from the role of bacteria in the origins of life to their key functions in helping animals bond on the savannah, to new therapies that could emerge from understanding their roles in diseases like allergies and IBD. One fascinating subject which I think Yong could have touched on is the potential role of microbes in seeding extraterrestrial life.
The universal theme threading through the book is symbiosis: how bacteria and all other life forms function together, mostly peacefully but sometimes in a hostile manner. The first complex cell likely evolved when a primitive life form swallowed an ancient bacterium, and since this seminal event life on earth has never been the same. They are involved in literally every imaginable life process: gut bacteria break down food in mammals’ stomachs, nitrogen fixing bacteria construct the basic building blocks of life, others play critical roles in the water, carbon and oxygen cycle. Some enable insects, aphids and a variety of other animals to wage chemical warfare, yet others keep coral reefs fresh and stable. There’s even a species that can cause a sex change in wasps. Perhaps the most important ones are those which break down environmental chemicals as well as food into myriad interesting and far-ranging molecules affecting everything, from mate-finding to distinguishing friends from foes to nurturing babies’ immune systems through their ability to break down sugars in mother’s milk. This critical role that bacterial symbiosis plays in human disease, health and even behavior is probably the most fascinating aspect of human-bacteria co-existence, and one which is only now being gradually teased out. Yong’s central message is that the reason bacteria are so fully integrated into living beings is simple: we evolved in a sweltering, ubiquitous pool of them that was present and evolving billions of years before we arrived on the scene. Our relationship with them is thus complex and multifaceted, and as Yong demonstrates, has been forged through billions of years of messy and haphazard evolution. For one thing, this therefore makes any kind of simple generalization about them almost certainly false. And it makes us realize how humanity would rapidly become extinct in a world suddenly devoid of microbes.
Secondly, Yong is adept at painting vivid portraits of the men and women who are unraveling the secrets of the microbial universe. Old pioneers like Pasteur, Leeuwenhoek and Koch come alive in crisp portraits (for longer ones, I would recommend Paul DeKruif's captivating classic, "Microbe Hunters"). At the same time, new pioneers herald new visions. Yong crisscrosses the globe, from the San Diego Zoo to the coral reefs of Australia to the savannah, talking to adventurous researchers about wasps, aphids, hyenas, squid, pangolins, spiders, human infants and all the microbes that are intimately sharing their genes with these life forms. He is also a sure guide to the latest technology including gene sequencing that has revolutionized our understanding of these fascinating creatures (although I would have appreciated a longer discussion on the so-called CRISPR genetic technology that has recently taken the world by storm). Yong’s narrative makes it clear that innovative ideas come from the best researchers combining their acumen with the best technology. At the same time his sometimes-wondrous narrative is tempered with caution, and he makes it clear that the true implications of the findings emerging from the microbiome will take years and perhaps decades to unravel. The good news is that we're just getting started.
Thirdly, Yong delves deeply into the fascinating functions of bacteria in health and disease, and this involves diseases which go way beyond the familiar pandemics that have bedeviled humanity throughout its history. Antibiotics, antibiotic resistance and the marvelous process of horizontal gene transfer that allows bacteria to rapidly share genes and evolve all get a nod. Yong also leads us through the reasonable but still debated 'hygiene hypothesis' which lays blame for an increased prevalence of allergies and autoimmune disorders at the feet of overly and deliberately clean environments and suburban living. He discusses the novel practice of fecal transplants that promises to cure serious intestinal inflammation and ailments like IBD and Crohn’s disease, but is also wary about its unpredictable and unknown consequences. He also talks about the fascinating role that bacteria in newborn infants’ bodies play when they digest crucial sugars in mother’s milk and affect multiple functions of the developing baby’s body and brain. Unlike proteins and nucleic acids, sugars have been the poor cousins of biochemistry for a long time, and their key role in microbial symbiosis only highlights their importance for life. Finally and most tantalizingly, the book describes potential impacts that the body’s microbiome and its outside guests might have on animal and human behavior itself, leading to potential breakthrough treatments in psychiatry. The real implications of these roles will have to be unraveled through the patient, thoroughgoing process that is the mainstay of science, but there is little doubt that the arrows seem to be pointing in very promising directions.
“There is grandeur in this view of life”, Darwin said in his magnum opus “The Origin of Species”. And just how much grandeur there exactly is becomes apparent with the realization that Darwin was dimly aware at best of microbes and their seminal role in the origin and propagation of life. Darwin saw life as an 'entangled bank' full of wondrous species: I can only imagine that he would have been enthralled and stupefied by the vision of this entangled bank presented in Ed Yong's book.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
The microbial life that makes us who we are
By Mal Warwick
If you’re a physician, a nutritionist, or have studied biology, you’re probably aware that our bodies contain an immense number of microbes. Most of the rest of us find that surprising. Though I knew about the bugs that inhabit my digestive system, British science journalist Ed Yong helped me understand just how numerous and widely dispersed those microbes are on my body—and yours. Try 39 trillion. That number’s greater than the estimated number of human cells in our bodies. And it’s 100 times as great as the largest estimate of the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. In other words, it’s an understatement to say that the number of microbes we contain is astronomical.
Should we fear the microbes within us?
Now, before you panic about the many diseases you’ll contract from all these bugs, rest assured. “There are fewer than 100 species of bacteria that cause infectious diseases in humans,” as Yong explains in I Contain Multitudes. “By contrast, the thousands of species in our guts are mostly harmless.” And a great many of them play indispensable roles in keeping us alive and disease-free. They bolster our immune system, digest our food, and even help make us who we are.
How did this come about? “Remember that animals emerged in a world that had already been teeming with microbes for billions of years,” Yong notes. “They were the rulers of the planet long before we arrived. And when we did arrive, of course we evolved ways of interacting with the microbes around us.”
The world within us
The collection of microbes in each of us is generally called the microbiome. Yong explains its functions and its fathomless diversity in conversational English with occasional flashes of humor. “Every one of us is a zoo in our own right,” he writes. “A colony enclosed within a single body. A multi-species collective. An entire world. . . Some species are common, but none is everywhere.” And that collection of species is unique to each of us. The microbes in my gut and on my skin are very different from those in and on you. Not only that but “your right hand shares just a sixth of its microbial species with your left hand.”
The symbiosis spectrum
The theme of I Contain Multitudes is symbiosis. In common parlance, symbiosis suggests mutual benefit. Technically, though, the meaning is broader. “If one partner benefited at the expense of the other, it was a parasite (or a pathogen if it caused disease). If it benefited without affecting its host, it was a commensal. If it benefited its host, it was a mutualist. All these styles of coexistence fell under the rubric of symbiosis.” Yong’s book includes a huge number of examples, not just within our own bodies but in animals and plants as well. If you have an affinity for science, you’ll love this book.
By the way, “there is no such thing as a ‘good microbe’ or a ‘bad microbe’ . . . In reality, bacteria exist along a continuum of lifestyles, between ‘bad’ parasites and ‘good’ mutualists. Some microbes . . . slide from one end of the parasite-mutualist spectrum to the other, depending on the strain, and on the host they find themselves in.” The possibilities of these combinations are endless.
The ever-evolving field of biology
Yong will take you on a tour of the laboratories where scientists study symbiosis and its effects on its many hosts in other living things. You’ll meet the pioneers in the field—a fascinating lot, few of whom match the stereotype of the frizzzy-haired, absent-minded professor. You’ll learn about the emerging fields of biogeography, metagenomics, and synthetic biology. And you’ll see how the discoveries in these fields are benefiting medical science—and portend more advances in the future.
The title of this engrossing book is from Walt Whitman: “I am large. I contain multitudes.”
About the author
Born Edmund Soon-Weng Yong in 1981, Ed Yong is a staff member of The Atlantic. He has degrees in zoology and biochemistry from England’s most celebrated centers of scientific teaching and research, the University of Cambridge and University College London. His popular blog has been incorporated into the National Geographic online.
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