Invisible Allies: Microbes That Shape Our Lives - Rilegato

Farrell, Jeanette

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0374336083 ISBN 13: 9780374336080

Casa editrice: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2005

Riassunto

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.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

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.

Product Description:

Book by Farrell Jeanette

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Data di pubblicazione: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0374336083
• ISBN 13: 9780374336080
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 165