Anne Maczulak

Most of us mainly know about the bacteria that are bad for us--with good reason. Harmful bacteria can be very harmful indeed, so it's natural that they capture most of our attention.

And that's too bad, because harmful bacteria are a tiny minority, and many of the remainder aren't just harmless. They're vital to such basic functions as digesting our food. They play essential roles in making Earth habitable. The earliest bacteria played a crucial role in creating the free oxygen that made life as we know it possible.

And, if that weren't enough, they offer possible solutions to some of the most serious problems that threaten us now, including exhaustion of our fossil fuels, pollution, and global warming.

She also covers some more everyday, yet overlooked, issues. A significant problem facing medicine today is the rise of drug-resistant and antiseptic-resistant disease bacteria. Overuse of antibiotics, in response to patient demands as well as "just in case," and overuse of antiseptics, in hospitals as well as in our everyday lives, where bottles of antibacterial gels seem to be everywhere, have generated variants of disease-causing bacteria that are harder and harder to kill.

This little book has a lot of ground to cover, but Maczulak does so with grace and in clear, readable prose, as well as illustrations that actually illuminate her points. I do think that on some points she has an overly rosy view, particularly of how safe it may really be to release into the environment bacteria that will clean up pollution. However, it's fair to note, also, that she knows a lot more on the subject than I do. Overall, it's an unintimidating way to increase your knowledge in an important area.

Recommended.

I bought this book.… (más)

This book is written for young readers, it gives a big spectrum of methods to deal with waste. It describes the different systems very good.
I didn`t like that there was almost no connection to our own personal live. No ideas what everybody can do to reduce and prevent waste.
You get the feeling that there is a solution for all this garbage that we produce. Teenagers must know that they are also responsible for trashing the planet.
Don’t always invent new technologies without going to the root of the problem.… (más)

About: A layman's introduction to microbiology. Explains what microbiologists do, what types of microbiology there are and the history of the field. Many different germs are explained and shown either in photos or diagrams. Types of germ killing products and how to use them are described.

Pros: A very thorough introduction written in understandable terms, covers a ton of ground. Glossary, other resources and bibliography included.

Things I learned:

* E. coli resides only in human and animal digestive tracts.

* There are only 6,000 to 10,000 known species of microbes, far less than one percent of the total thought to exist.

* The amount of harmless microbes on Earth vastly out number the dangerous ones.

* Contaminating our water supply would be a very inefficient terrorist attack.
* 70 percent isopropyl alcohol is used because higher amounts (say, 95 percent) evaporates
too quickly to destroy all microbes.

* Mucus is a noun, mucous is an adjective.

* People with tattoos are six times more likely to have hepatitis C

* Regarding the 1918 flu epidemic, the surgeon general said: "If the epidemic continues its mathematical rate of acceleration, civilization could easily disappear from the face of the earth within a few weeks."

* 38 percent of people do not know there is no cure for AIDS

* Does the five-second rule work? It depends. Since microbes are all about, one should assume anything dropped will pick up some germs, five seconds is easily enough time for this to happen. Microbes are invisible, so "looking clean" means nothing. Also consider that most microbes are harmless and our immune system is pretty good at fighting stuff off.

Cons: Can read like a textbook and the info comes at the reader non-stop, so the book is best in small doses. The "five-second rule" idea seems like it was tacked on in order to drum up interest (well, this did work on me) as the concept is only mentioned a few times in the book and summed up in a half-page at the end. I found a few little errors: hepatitis C is referred to as HVC and then once as HCV on page 211, the index lists both "Five-Second Rule" and "five-second rule."

Grade: B… (más)