Publication date:
07 March 2023Publisher
Pelagic PublishingDimensions:
216x138mm5x9"
ISBN-13: 9781784274337
As we continue to live through a pandemic, all eyes are on microbes: an imperceptible and pervasive threat that hangs heavy on the air and clings to surfaces. But the reality of micro-organisms is far more diverse and life-sustaining than such a notion would have us believe (hence the title of this book). Not only are they omnipresent, but we are highly attuned to their workings – both in the world at large and right here within our own bodies. Meanwhile, cutting-edge microbiome research is changing our understanding of reality, challenging fundamental concepts of free will and individuality. Threaded through everything are microbes: the very glue that holds ecosystems together.
This topical, engaging and original book counters the prevailing narrative of microbes as the bane of society, along the way providing much-needed clarity on the overwhelmingly beneficial role they play. We discover how the microbiome is highly relevant to environmental and social equity issues, while there’s also discussion about how microbes may influence our decisions: even the way we think about how we think may need to be revisited. Invisible Friends introduces the reader to a vast, pullulating cohort of minute life – friends you never knew you had.
Jake Robinson is the Gilbert White, the Henry David Thoreau, of the microbiome. His charmingly-written book, a work of science leavened by literary allusion and engaging personal memoir, invites us to dive down through many powers of ten to the invisible level of microbes. Levels, rather, for “microbes” range in size from each other as much as we do from them. Microbes live in us, on us, through us, about us. Bacteria include the green photosynthesis specialists that inhabit the solar panels we call leaves, and are the ultimate source of all our food and oxygen. Each of our cells is an ecosystem of tiny biochemists, whose R and D we borrow to stay alive through every next second. Microbes invented antibiotics for their own protection, megayears before we hijacked them (and abused them) for ours. Micro-organisms are our foes, but our indispensable friends too. Do they even, as Robinson proposes, manipulate us and our behaviour to their, and our, benefit? Not just us but bumblebees and trees, and who knows what else? Do bacteria in clouds make rain, again to their advantage? Such suggestions, music to my ears, may prove controversial but nobody could fail to be intrigued.