We think of disease as our enemy, something we try to eradicate; germs and infections are things we battle. But in this witty, engaging book, evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk reveals that, in fact, disease is our partner, not our foe, and is responsible for everything from how we look to how we have sex.
Using her own work on sexual selection as well as a sampling of stories from the natural world, Zuk makes us reconsider the fearsome parasite.
Bacteria, viruses and fungi cause of all kinds of major and minor plagues and pestilences: bird flu, Ebola, smallpox, athlete’s foot. We blast the critters with antimicrobials and recoil in horror should a cookie we’re about to eat fall on the ground. (Unless there’s no one watching–in which case many folks, we suspect, eat the cookie.) As for worms: Well, think tapeworm. And cringe. But there is another way to think about microbes and worms–as entities that have lovingly helped shape the human form. Such is the viewpoint of evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk.
Fascinating.
What’s eating you? Or to put it more politely, “sharing your space,” which happens to be your body? The answers are oddly consoling in evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk’s witty “disease appreciation” course… [B]eguiling.
Witty and erudite, Zuk writes in a conversational tone, complete with wry observations not only about her subject but also about science and scientists. Her book may not make you happy about the various pathogens, bacteria and diseases that thrive in our world, but Zuk will give you new appreciation to their complexity and how some of them have even help us.
[T]hought-provoking and sublimely witty.
