Customer Reviews

The Invisible Kingdom: From the Tips of Our Fingers to the Tops of Our Trash, Inside the Curious World of Microbes

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This short introduction (only 192 pages plus a glossary) to the world of microbes is extremely well-written and remarkably easy to read. Without using technical language, Idan Ben-Barak conveys the variety and importance of the hidden but in some ways all-powerful world of bugs. As he notes in one typically startling passage, if we could wipe out all microbes, all life, including our own, would cease immediately. Ben-Barak covers genes, proteins, bacteria, fungi, and viruses and gives vivid examples of the role each of them plays in the biology of life, in health, in agriculture, in science, and in industry. We learn how microbes develop, how they cooperate, how they evolve, and how they control our bodies. It is remarkable that he can pack in so much information and still keep his story clear and enjoyable. (The writing is very lively and never dry or academic.) While this is a book for adults, I have to say it would make a remarkably good gift for any smart teenager who has an interest in health, in biology, or in science in general. Or of course, an interest in bugs!

I purchased this book because, as a part of our 6th grade science curriculum, we teach about microorganisms. I was very pleased with the book.

This is a great overview of microbes. The author combines history, examples, experiments, etc. in a very organized and readable way. Since this is a topic I teach, I've read a lot of books and have a good understanding of microorganisms. I learned new things that I will include in my teaching this year. This is one of the best books on microorganisms I've read.

I have purchased a copy of the book for all teachers who teach 6th grade science at my school. I can't give this book a stronger recommendation than this.

(The only reason I gave the book 4-stars is because there is no index.)

This is an excellent book for the non-scientific person to learn about the basics of microbes. I enjoyed reading it (and enjoyed the humorous attempts to make it palatable for a non-scientist) and learned a great deal about the characteristics, lives and unique features of various microbes. I read it to learn about bacteria, however, I now really appreciate many facets of bacteria, viruses, etc. Excellent book!

I consider myself a knowledgeable and well-read individual when it comes to science, but the state-of-the-art biology of "The Invisible Kingdom" still managed to surprise me more than I care to admit. Horizontal gene transfer and the evolution of evolution - who knew? Or microbes regulating the rate of their own mutations? Or Tasmanian devils being attacked by an infectious type of cancer?
And yet, Idan Ben-Barak manages to deliver all this without ever resorting to blandness or to leaving behind the reader who is not versed with the topic. Everything is explained from the basics, and yet remains both lively and engaging. To me, this book was an eye-opener to the microbes' view of the world en par with "The Selfish Gene", and the writing style was as entertaining as "Goedel, Escher, Bach". Recommended to anyone who wants to know why we need microbes and why they don't need us.

The book is great but with an annoying writing style but as the previous review states it is more geared toward a teenager with stupid attemps at being funny or using "cool" words and phrases. It appears that the author is as much interested in writing comedy as he is about writing about microbes. Regarding the comedy he should go back to his day job. That said this is still a book worth reading. I devoured it in one sitting, albeit one annoying sitting. I learned alot. I can recommend it but just be forewarned about the attempts at humor. He was trying to make the topic more palatable but went overboard.

I bought this book expecting to find out more about microbes, a fascinating topic about which I know very little. I don't have a formal scientific background and am far from an expert on biology. However, Ben-Barak's book taught me nothing I didn't already know. From the language and the level of knowledge assumed in readers, the book appears to be aimed at children: something which should have been made clearer in its title and marketing. To be fair, this is perhaps the fault of Amazon rather than of the author. This would make a great read for an intelligent 12 or 13-year-old. However, if you are an adult interested in science, you should give it a miss.

The book is interesting, and I would love more books about the wonderful world of microbes. However, the book is also misleading. It has a definite 'intelligent design' slant, and should not be considered scientific. It is impossible to talk about symbiosis (two species that are dependent on each other for life, like humans and the bacteria that live in our guts) without discussing evolution, as the two species have to evolve together. It IS possible to discuss it without talking about creationism. This author opens the book with a little disclaimer that creation/evolution (he says 'origin of life') is hotly debated and that he won't be going into it - BIG RED FLAG for me as a scientist, since creationism is NOT hotly debated among scientists, and religious arguments generally are not even acknowledged in scientific publications.

I would let this go, but in a later chapter the author describes a microbial organism that 'wants' to get its spores to a specific location, and that doesn't 'trust' flies to carry those spores, so it needs another mechanism. This chapter comes with an academic disclaimer that 'decisions' are made by evolution and not the organism (this statement itself is misleading as there are no choices and thus no decisions in evolution), but the entire story is told as though the microbe is thinking about its own survival, and deciding how best to do that - which is not how evolution works.

The author received his degree at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and is currently a Philosophy of Science student, and this book gives a very skewed and unscientific idea of how organisms evolve. I would absolutely never allow my children to read this book, as the author is pushing a religious agenda that has no place in a scientific text.