Books

Books : reviews

Nicholas P. Money.
The Amoeba on the Room: lives of the microbes.
OUP. 2014

We tend to think that the natural world is dominated by animals and plants. But these big organisms form just a sliver of life, vastly outnumbered by the many species we do not see: single-celled protists, tiny fungi, bacteria, archaea, and a host of viruses. Microbes not only cover every part of this planet but underpin and mould the entire biosphere. In this fascinating exploration of life unseen, Money celebrates the extraordinary variety, beauty, and resilience of microscopic creatures that inhabit the ocean, soil, lakes and rivers, the air, and our bodies.