A Field Guide to Germs

I'm a professional microbiologist (and plague expert) and find this book to be succinct, accurate, and a pleasure to read. Sounds to me like the reviewer from Brooklyn might have a competing volume to sell. I've recommended this work and its previous edition for years to my students and colleagues. It's a rare example of science writing that is both informative and fun.

"A Field Guide to Germs" is a mordantly funny series of one or two-page essays on the microscopic life forms that can make our lives nasty, brutish, and short. This book is organized like a field guide to birds, but instead of browsing through a description of the shy and spritely wren and its habitat, you will read about the not-so-shy and spritely 'Candida albicans', its description and habitat (the human mouth, baby bottoms, etc.). In fact it is in the 'Candida albicans' section where Wayne Biddle maintains that, "even the most squeaky-clean aesthete has a lot in common with rotten tree trunks."The essays are in alphabetical order, so yeasts are jumbled together with other fungi, viruses, and bacteria. You may be able to read some of essays with a superior smirk on your face ("I don't think I have to worry about catching chikungunya or o'nyong-nyong."). This inevitably sets you up for a bruising in a following essay, in this case the "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome."Did you ever wonder where monosodium glutamate, aka MSG comes from? According to Biddle, this Chinese restaurant stalwart is a byproduct of 'corynebacterium glutamicum', a kissing cousin of the diptheria germ.Let's hope you don't find a mutated version in your egg foo yung!"A Field Guide to Germs" is very funny and easy to read - the very antithesis of a textbook - but it is not recommended for the weak-of-stomach or the hypochondriac.

I am always on the look out for books which explain scientific phenomenon in ways that junior high school, high school, and undergraduate students will enjoy. Books that tweak their interest so they will go on and read the boring textbooks that so many professors and educators feel are necessary as drudgework. Biddle's book is a nice change of pace from the usual textbooks on viruses, germs, etc. and is enough to get the kids interested. It is also very readable, cynical, and caustic which is right up my creek. He deftly explains our own responsibilities in the cycle of viral infections world-wide and brings up the fact that we are ignoring the problems in Third World countries, which will eventually hurt us. Only suggestion I have is next time include prions and mad cow disease/Jakob-Crutzfeld/kuru! Too bad he can't write about politicians this way... Karen Sadler, Science Education, University of Pittsburgh

This was an informative, interesting & often hilarious book. I have used it for several years as a resource while teaching about microbes at a science museum in Chicago. But don't get me wrong, this book is written to be enjoyed by non-science folk, as well as, the science teacher. It is easy to navigate through when used as a resource and fun to read cover to cover, like a book of well written essays.

From adenovirus to zika fever, the pantheon of germs is discussed here in an informative and fun manner. Biddle focuses especially on historical aspects and classic anecdotes (like the one about the Plague-infested corpses being catapulted over city walls as an early form of biological warfare). We get a lot on where the germs were first discovered, and what part of the world they are ravaging today. The book is illustrated with classic pictures from days of old, such as the cartoon which makes fun of Jenner's cowpox/smallpox vaccine by showing people with cows coming out of every part of the body. We also get lots of horrid descriptions of the tortures that passed for medical treatment in the premodern age, i.e. bleeding, purgatives.All your favorite diseases are here from the familiar to the obscure: AIDS, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Anthrax, various cold viruses, Chinese Restaurant Syndrome, Q Fever, Malaria, Tuberculosis, Polio, Staph, Strep and all your other disease friends jostle for your attention in this nice little book that will make a wonderful addition to the library of any pathology enthusiast.