The Amoeba in the Room: Lives of the Microbes - Hardcover

I found this book immensely enjoyable and I would encourage anyone wanting to know more about the huge swathe of life on the planet that passes us by unseen to seek out a copy. (Dale Walters, The Biologist)

I found this bookimmensely enjoyable and I would encourage anyone wanting to know more about the huge swathe of life on the planet that passes us by unseen to seek out a copy. Indeed, I have recommended it to my students an dit will be recommended reading for one of my modules. (The Biologist, Professor Dale Walters Cbiol FSB)

a fascinating reada beautifully written book (The Biologist, Professor Dale Walters Cbiol FSB)

fascinating and often startlingly funny bookThis is a truly revolutionary book that turns on its head the way we see the world (Robert Hanbury Tenison, Country Life)

Nicholas Money is an excellent guide (Helen Bynum, Times Literary Supplement)

An impassioned fascination for microscopic life around and within us...Overall, Money delivers a heady mixture of history, philosophy, art and even poetry...This is a lucid and informative book. There is an impressive afterword of references and notes, and fine line drawings. So much that is lyrical and little-known waits to be discovered here - novelties that will appeal to new undergraduates as well as to incorrigible microbial enthusiasts like myself. (Mark O. Martin, Nature)

The world will not seem the same to anyone who reads his book. (Helen Bynum, Times Literary Supplement)

[An] excellent introduction to modern microbiology. (Science Uncovered)

Beautifully written ... Money has a great style, and a very important message. To see what is really going on in the biosphere, the only zone of life that we know of at this point, you need a microscope. Bacteria are the gods of humans. (The Stranger)

"Nicholas Money is an expert guide. This world will not seem the same to anyone who reads his book." (The Times Literary Supplement)

Animals and plants rule the world - or do they? A cup of seawater contains 100 million cells which are preyed upon by billions of viruses; a pinch of soil swarms with cryptic microbes whose activities are a mystery; 50 million tons of fungal spores are released into the atmosphere every year and affect the weather; and, human beings are mobile ecosystems that farm, and are farmed by, vast populations of bacteria and viruses involved with almost every aspect of our wellbeing. These are the vast, unnoticed, unmentioned 'elephants in the room' of planet earth.

The more we learn about microbial biodiversity, the less important do animals and plants become in our understanding life on earth. The flowering of microbial science is revolutionizing biology and medicine in ways unimagined even a decade or two ago, and is inspiring a new view of what it means to be human. Nicholas P. money explores the extraordinary breadth of the microbial world and the vast swathes of biological diversity that are now becoming recognized using molecular methods. Money argues for nothing less than a revolution in our perception of the living world: the big lumbering forms we see are just froth on a vast ocean of single-celled protists, bacteria, and viruses that constitute most of life on earth.