Product Description

Germs get a bad press, so we never hear their side of the story. What is life really like in their invisible kingdom? Arno Karlen tells the fascinating life story of the germ Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb for short), the microbe that causes Lyme disease. He takes us through its ancestry, its appearance, its environment, its sex life, its struggle for survival, and its adventures with other species, including us. Interwoven with Bb's biography are fascinating discursions on how life began, why we cannot live without bacteria, and how perturbed environments breed disease. Karlen also describes how perceptions of microbes have changed through history, especially their unfair connection with dirt and suffering. The Biography of a Germ makes the world of microbiology absolutely riveting, and it will help to rehabilitate Bb's undeserved reputation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #928208 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The philosopher Wittgenstein might say that if a microbe could talk we couldn't understand it, but psychoanalyst and science writer Arno Karlenhas done his best to listen and translate in Biography of a Germ. This lovely, funny, and even endearing portrait of Borrelia burgdorferi (or Bb), the screwy bacterium that causes Lyme disease, would charm even a terminal mysophobe like Howard Hughes. Unfortunately, Karlen has to justify his topic at greater length than most biographers, but his reasoning is nearly lyrical in its enthusiasm for the microscopic. Following the genealogy of the germ back to our common ancestor (gulp) and beyond, the author finds a freshness in what we too often see as dry taxonomy and genetics. From there he watches Bb as it makes its way through the circulation superhighways of deer, ticks, and hikers, each as top on its complex life cycle.

We elbowed our way into Bb's story comparatively recently, ironically hurting ourselves as we renewed our appreciation of and commitment to wilderness areas. As we destroyed, and then created, habitat for deer, we ended up inviting Bb to run amok in our bodies. Karlen captures the beauty and terror of this bizarre chain of events perfectly, providing new insights into our relationship with our environment. Much like its cousins that live harmlessly in our bloodstream, eyelashes, and gut, this tick-borne germ will eventually evolve a truce with us to protect its reproduction; unfortunately for current and future sufferers of Lyme disease, we're quite a few generations away from that happy time. While we're waiting, we can read Biography of a Germ to learn more about our new tenants and why we should care about them. --Rob Lightner

About the Author
Arno Karlen's essays on history, medicine and behavioural science have appeared in many scholarly journals and popular magazines. He is the author of several books, and lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

A triumph of popular scientific writing
An unusual premise which really works - 'The Biography of a Germ' is a triumph of popular scientific writing. While this book acts as a brilliant introduction to the microbial world, it has a more serious message about the interaction between human activity and disease. Concentrating on the Lyme disease bacterium (a big problem in the USA), Arno Karlen describes the raw facts of the microbe's lifecycle with flare (which is no easy thing to do), the factors which led to this normally inocuous microbe's emergence as a human disease, and the plight of the families which brought this disease to light in the 1970s.

Fascinating, well-read introduction to the subject of germs
From its title, I didn't quite know what to expect, but must say found this a really interesting book. It takes as its germ of choice Borelia Bergdorferi and proceeds to describe how it was discovered, what its life-cycle is like, the impact of environmental change, and how it interacts with its hosts. Since this is the spirochete responsible for Lyme disease, something I had heard of but knew little about, it presented quite an important lesson as well, about how human interference in ecosystems has ultimately caused illness among ourselves. It is quite a slender volume, but very well-written, and has certainly whetted my appetite for the subject. It is aimed at the layman, and if you have any interest in the subjects of microbiology or the environment, it is definitely worth buying and reading.