Invisible Allies: Microbes That Shape Our Lives (BCCB Blue Ribbon Nonfiction Book Award (Awards)) - Hardcover

Farrell, Jeanette

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374336083 ISBN 13: 9780374336080

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2005

Synopsis

Mmm-mmm, microbes!

Although we are accustomed to equating the presence of microbes with disease, in fact most microbes play a vital "friendly" role in shaping our lives. It is not just that one hundred million microbes can populate a thimbleful of fertile soil, or that many millions live happily in as much of our saliva. Microbes are everywhere, and we could not survive without them. To emphasize their amazing ubiquity, Jeanette Farrell considers the invisible bugs essential to an everyday event: the eating of a light lunch consisting of a cheese sandwich and a chocolate bar. Microbes create such a lunch, digest it, and, through the alchemy of decomposition, transform it so that the cycle can start all over again. In the course of her eye-opening narrative, Dr. Farrell relates the historical significance of using microbes to preserve foods, our long-standing ambivalence about the microbes that live on and in us, and our growing understanding of their importance.

Interspersed with fascinating anecdotes and illustrations, Invisible Allies will transform the reader's perception of the microcosmic world - around and inside us.

About this title

About the Author

Jeanette Farrell, as a girl, worked on weekends at a tuberculosis sanatorium in Kentucky founded by her father. After graduating from college, she volunteered for a leprosy relief agency in India. She has recently completed her medical residency in Seattle, Washington, where she lives with her husband and two children.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Gr. 6-9. The author of Invisible Enemies (1998), Farrell now offers a fascinating, broad-ranging and imminently readable book on the beneficial roles of microbes. After stating some amazing facts about microbes and advising readers against "running, somewhat futilely, for a bar of soap," the introduction provides a vivid picture of Antony van Leeuwenhoek's discovery of microorganisms in 1676. The chapters that follow consider beneficial microbes in the production of bread, cheese, and chocolate as well as their vital role in the gut, where they break down certain foods, kill harmful microbes, and enable certain genes in the intestines to maximize digestion. Finally, Farrell explains the process by which microbes dispose of human waste in sewage treatment plants, noting that they are also used to clean up oil spills and toxins in the environments. Illustrations include photos as well as interesting archival material. Without talking down to her audience or hyping the grosser aspects of the subject, Farrell presents what is known about beneficial microbes and acknowledges the ongoing study of these amazing life-forms. Carolyn Phelan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0374336083
• ISBN 13: 9780374336080
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176