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chhhloejean's review against another edition
4.0
Microbiology textbook has a love child with your favorite national geographic animal show. Yong walks the thin line between minutiae and superficiality very gracefully. He offers enough information to show nuance without letting it bog readers down. The stories were all fascinating and the claims exciting. A wonderfully crafted book. DISCLAIMER: this is one of my favorite topics that I have learned about for years so i’m not sure how it would come across to someone with little background on the topic.
namestaken's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
5.0
thetainaship's review
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
1.5
I want to preface this review with the caveat that university has kind of ruined nonfiction for me: nowadays everything just feels like I'm reading an introduction and keep waiting for the real deal to start – the details, the evidence, the argumentation – but it never comes. That definitely affected my enjoyment of this book.
The writing is pleasant enough, but I feel I Contain Multitudes is a bit worse than usual about leaving out important details. Often Ed Yong will offhandedly mention something really fascinating (such as that microbes "ensure the sanctity of the blood-brain barrier", p. 63) but doesn't elaborate and never returns to the topic, so that I feel I'm just reading a list of fun facts. Or he'll mention that deep-sea giant tube worms living around hydrothermal vents have no mouth or anus because they get all their nutrition from chemoautotrophic bacteria living inside them that use sulfides for energy, but doesn't explain how those sulfides get from the surrounding water into the worms and to their bacterial symbiotes.
But my biggest complaint is the glaring lack of critical engagement at times. Yong cautions against assuming causation, so is careful to avoid stating that gut microbes whose presence correlates with obesity make you fat, but blandly assumes that fat = bad, and takes it for granted as a sign of unhealth. He mentions research into "curing" autism without any reflection. And in a chapter especially devoted to ecosystems, in a whole book that advocates for a wider ecological view of microbiomes, he presents the introduction of Leucaena to Northern Australia as cattle fodder as an unambiguous success for the cattle industry, when these plants are among the worst invasive species according to the IUCN.
The writing is pleasant enough, but I feel I Contain Multitudes is a bit worse than usual about leaving out important details. Often Ed Yong will offhandedly mention something really fascinating (such as that microbes "ensure the sanctity of the blood-brain barrier", p. 63) but doesn't elaborate and never returns to the topic, so that I feel I'm just reading a list of fun facts. Or he'll mention that deep-sea giant tube worms living around hydrothermal vents have no mouth or anus because they get all their nutrition from chemoautotrophic bacteria living inside them that use sulfides for energy, but doesn't explain how those sulfides get from the surrounding water into the worms and to their bacterial symbiotes.
But my biggest complaint is the glaring lack of critical engagement at times. Yong cautions against assuming causation, so is careful to avoid stating that gut microbes whose presence correlates with obesity make you fat, but blandly assumes that fat = bad, and takes it for granted as a sign of unhealth. He mentions research into "curing" autism without any reflection. And in a chapter especially devoted to ecosystems, in a whole book that advocates for a wider ecological view of microbiomes, he presents the introduction of Leucaena to Northern Australia as cattle fodder as an unambiguous success for the cattle industry, when these plants are among the worst invasive species according to the IUCN.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical content, Excrement, and Fatphobia
katie_skean's review against another edition
Really enjoy his prose style and attention to detail.
rebecanunez's review against another edition
5.0
Es muy interesante y para nada es complicado de comprender. La verdad la temática es importante para nuestra salud, pero no nos paramos a pensar en este aspecto de nuestro organismo. Lo recomiendo! Ademas no es información que sea aplicable solo a un segmentáramos d ella población, todos podemos beneficiarnos de esta información.
mogffm3's review against another edition
3.0
Heavier in biology and the microbiology of animals/organisms than I anticipated. I expected it to be strictly mostly about humans.
Still a good read, just not as light of a read, as I expected.
Still a good read, just not as light of a read, as I expected.