Books

Books : reviews

Ed Yong.
I Contain Multitudes: the microbes within us and a grander view of life.
Vintage Penguin. 2016

Your body is teeming with tens of trillions of microbes. It’s an entire world, a colony full of life.

In other words, you contain multitudes.

They sculpt our organs, protect us from diseases, guide our behaviour and bombard us with their genes. They also hold the key to understanding all life on earth.

Here, Ed Yong opens our eyes and invites us to marvel at ourselves and other animals in a new light, less as individuals and more as thriving ecosystems. You’ll never think about your mind, body or preferences in the same way again.

Ed Yong.
An Immense World: how animal senses reveal the hidden realms around us.
Vintage Penguin. 2022

The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving only a tiny sliver of this world.

An Immense World coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, welcoming us into previously unfathomable dimensions – the world as it is truly perceived by other animals. In doing so, it shows us that to understand our world we don't need to travel to other places; we need to see through other eyes.