The Perfect Predator tells the story of two world-renowned, globetrotting HIV research scientists almost defeated by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This harrowing, first-hand narrative takes a reader bedside throughout Tom’s seemingly futile battle with a multi-drug resistant bacterial infection. It lays bare the couple’s struggles.
Dirt is Good: The Advantages of Germs for Your Child’s Developing Immune System answers parent’s questions about the microbiome and their kid’s health. Parents, hold on to your diaper bags, Dirt is Good: The Advantages of Germs for Your Child’s Developing Immune System seeks to answer microbiome-related parenting questions. Science writer Sandra Blakeslee teams up with microbiome scientists, Rob Knight, PhD and Jack Gilbert, PhD, to eloquently capture the answers to the hundreds of questions Rob and Jack have been asked by concerned parents. After a general introduction about the human microbiome, Dirt is Good starts with the interaction of the microbiome and human immune system in pregnancy. Continuing on through birth, first foods (both liquid and solid), the book touches on a range of topics organized loosely into chapters including the environment, conditions, depression, vaccines, and tests. There’s an amazing diversity of chapter topics. What Dirt is Good does well Talks candidly, clearly, and quickly about the current understanding of the microbiome and children’s health. Dirt is Good is clear about not overselling the microbiome and current probiotics. Throughout the book are stories of how their experience as parents and microbiome researchers change their ideas of cleanliness and health. What is
Your Baby’s Microbiome: The Critical Role of Vaginal Birth and Breastfeeding for Lifelong Health summarizes the latest scientific research on the benefits of vaginal birth and breastfeeding to an infant’s microbiome. Written for childbirth educators, doulas, midwives, lactation consultants, and interested parents, Your Baby’s Microbiome is packed full of detailed information on the microbial and epigenetic differences between vaginal and c-section births. For the parent debating between a scheduled c-section or vaginal birth – this book is a must read. Your Baby’s Microbiome provides all readers with the latest science – straight from the researchers – on how vaginal birth and breastfeeding are thought to influence gut microbiome establishment. Sticks to the Data I greatly appreciated the restraint of the authors in discussing areas like water-birthing and in-caul births, where the research has not been done. They make it extremely clear that the research hasn’t been done, but then do provide thoughtful ideas from the data currently available. I find this extremely important for such a rapidly developing science. Perhaps the reason Your Baby’s Microbiome doesn’t over-reach is because the book was written from interviews with the scientists done for the documentary Microbirth. “The movie had to have one central message and we
“Let Them Eat Dirt: Saving Your Child from an Oversanitized World” provides suggestions for a microbially rich and healthy childhood. Let Them Eat Dirt: Saving Your Child from an Oversanitized World talks directly to parents about the importance of microbes to your young kids. Authors Brett Finlay, PhD and Marie-Claire Arrieta, PhD have an excellent message – let kids get dirty and quit abusing antibiotics. Let Them Eat Dirt is an engaging read clearly written and written clearly by scientist parents who have been in the “parenting trenches”. This microbiome parenting book is a fun read. Several times I laughed out loud at the references to pregnancy and parenting woes. As a scientist, I appreciated their overall message about the importance of microbes to our health.
Ed Yong‘s I Contain Multitudes gives you the secret tour of the amazing world of beneficial microbial-host interactions and the passionate, quirky scientists driving the work. The importance of microbes to humans hit the media with a superhero-sized *TWACK* 5 to 7 years ago, when data from the Human Microbiome Project began to be published. Since then, the human microbiome has been implicated in everything from obesity and diabetes to anxiety and autism. Scores of books, good and not so, have been written in these early years of the microbiome, yet they all focus on the HUMAN microbiome. As a science blogger for National Geographic and writer for The Atlantic, Ed became engrossed with microbial-host interactions. If you’ve read a recent article on the human microbiome, chances are it was one of his. Here’s the secret – people have been studying microbial-host interactions in insects, squid, plants, lichens, corals, and other mammals – for centuries! We often know MORE about how these other microbes interact with their hosts during development, on a molecular, cellular, ecological, and evolutionary aspect than we do with human-microbe interactions. In fact, it’s this amazing field of non-human-microbe interactions that is the foundation the human microbiome work often