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Title: Microbiology in Action by John Heritage, Glyn Evans, R. A. Killington ISBN: 0-521-62912-8 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 15 July, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: Fact-filled introduction to how microbes affect our lives
Comment: This is a companion volume to the undergraduate text Introductory Microbiology. The emphasis here is on what microbes can do presented in a relatively nontechnical fashion so that the material is accessible to an educated readership and not just to bio meds. The material is organized in eight chapters from "The microbiology of soil and of nutrient cycling" through "Food microbiology" (an especially easy and interesting chapter) to "Chemotherapy and antibiotic resistance." The longest and most densely-packed chapter is "7 Microbial infections." The sub-headings in the chapters are in the form of questions, such as "5.5.1 How do microbes cause food spoilage?" or "7.8 What causes infections of skin, bone and soft tissues?" This format seems to encourage communication from the authors to the general reader and improves the readability of the text. There is a glossary of bold-faced terms and an index.

I picked this up because I felt a need for a more fundamental and broad introduction to microbiology than I would get from a popular volume, yet I didn't want to read a textbook. Microbiology in Action turns out to be a perfect fit to what I need. There is of course a United Kingdom flavor to the language and some of the examples since the authors are from the University of Leeds and the book is published by the Cambridge University Press, but that is entirely tolerable.

What makes this an excellent book is the wealth of information it contains. I learned about how microbes are used in mining and in the oil industry, how microbes ferment and preserve food, how recombinant DNA technology allows us to use microbes to produce pharmaceutical products such as insulin, interferons, hormones and antibiotics. I was delighted with some of the peripheral information. I learned, for example, how some people managed to have ice cream in the summer time before the age of refrigeration. Some big estates built icehouses to store perishable foodstuffs. "These are large structures, often built underground for extra insulation. Ice from local rivers and the estate lake was collected during the winter months and stored in the icehouse. Because of the size of the ice stock and the insulation of the structure, the ice gathered one year would last through the summer and into the next winter. This provided ice for summer desserts" (p. 90). I also learned that there are typically about one hundred million to one billion bacteria per gram dry weight of soil (p. 5) and that the number of cells of, in, and on the human body is around ten to the fourteenth, 90% of which are not of human origin (p. 119).

It is now common knowledge that we are products of the microbial world and could not exist without it. Microbes conditioned, and are conditioning, the planet so that so-called higher forms of life might exist. Still the vast majority of life on this planet is microbial, and that is a compelling reason for us to be more informed about microbes. Reading Microbiology in Action is an excellent way to begin.