Ed Yong has an innate ability to take exceptionally interesting topics and drill into them so deeply and with such enthusiasm and lack of direction that shear tedium overwhelms. His other book, An Immense World, describes how animals and plants perceive the world often in ways that far exceed our own perception, and even our imagination of what they are capable of. In Multitudes, Yong describes how earth’s biology is dominated by microscopic organisms.
Microbes inhabit every part of the earth from the deepest parts of the oceans to the hearts of geysers and polar icecaps. They are inside every living thing. Our bodies contain trillions. We may have significantly more microscopic cells than cells of our own. Without them we could not digest food and we would die. They probably influence how we feel, how we act, and how we interact with one another. They certainly do al those things throughout the animal kingdom. Microbial ecology is so rich and fascinating that in the hands of a decent mystery writer–because microbial activities are only now being uncovered with any rapidity with new DNA science–that a book of this sort would be a page-turner. Alas, for the second time in as many Yong books, I could not finish.
Eric, totally agree with you about Ed Yong. Have you read Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life, or Zoe Schlanger’s The Light Eaters? While they too are subject to the same criticism, like I Contain Multitudes they present ideas that change in a fundamental way the way I understand the world.