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A Field Guide to Germs, Revised and Updated Edition
From the ravages of the Ebola virus in Zaire to outbreaks of pneumonic plague in India and drug-resistant TB in New York City, contagious diseases are fighting back against once-unconquerable modern medicine. Public concern about infectious disease is on the rise as newspapers trumpet the arrivals of new germs and the reemergence of old ones.
In A Field Guide to Germs, Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Wayne Biddle brings readers face to face with nearly one hundred of the best-known (in terms of prevalence, power, historical importance, or even literary interest) of the myriad pathogens that live in and around the human population. Along with physical descriptions of the organisms and the afflictions they cause, the author provides folklore, philosophy, history, and such illustrations as nineteenth century drawings of plague-induced panic, microscopic photographs of HIV and Ebola, and wartime posters warning servicemen against syphilis and gonorrhea.
From cholera to chlamydia, TB to HIV, bubonic plague to Lyme disease, rabies to Congo-Crimean encephalitis, anthrax to Zika fever, and back to good old rhinitis (the common cold), A Field Guide to Germs is both a handy reference work to better understand today's headlines and a fascinating look at the astonishing impact of micro-organisms on social and political history.
Winner of the American Medical Writers Association's Walter C. Alvarez Honor Award.
In A Field Guide to Germs, Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Wayne Biddle brings readers face to face with nearly one hundred of the best-known (in terms of prevalence, power, historical importance, or even literary interest) of the myriad pathogens that live in and around the human population. Along with physical descriptions of the organisms and the afflictions they cause, the author provides folklore, philosophy, history, and such illustrations as nineteenth century drawings of plague-induced panic, microscopic photographs of HIV and Ebola, and wartime posters warning servicemen against syphilis and gonorrhea.
From cholera to chlamydia, TB to HIV, bubonic plague to Lyme disease, rabies to Congo-Crimean encephalitis, anthrax to Zika fever, and back to good old rhinitis (the common cold), A Field Guide to Germs is both a handy reference work to better understand today's headlines and a fascinating look at the astonishing impact of micro-organisms on social and political history.
Winner of the American Medical Writers Association's Walter C. Alvarez Honor Award.
240 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
June 4, 2016
When my sister Anne was about six, she rushed to tell our dad an amazing insight:"The moon doesn't actually follow us. It's just that we change spots and everybody can still see it because it's in the sky. It can't be following everybody."
His response: "I know."
My family has laughed about that over the years. This was in the days before parents said "very good" and "good job," but still, I think we can agree that he was a wet blanket. Some people just are. Book critics, especially, can be wet blankets. I thought of my dad when I read some of the reviews of A Field Guide to Germs: Revised and Updated. Apparently, some readers already know about all there is to know about microorganisms and history.
I sure don't. I had a vague idea from reading Rats, Lice and History as a kid and from observing RSV, strep, pinworms, giardia, roleola, scarlet fever, and more as a mom. If I wanted to make myself feel very old, I could dwell on the fact that the brother born just 2 1/2 years before me died a few hours after birth of rubella, and I knew a child with polio, and only my youngest child was vaccinated against chicken pox--because the others had it "naturally." And now--because I live in mosquito country and have children of childbearing age-- I'm beginning to worry about Zika. I feel old. But things change. In the 1995 edition that I just read, Zika fever is the very last entry, and the last words in the book are a parenthetical remark: "(You'll never see it, but we needed a Z.)"
If you're a wet-blanket type, this is something you'll complain about. A lot's happened since 1995. I liked the fact that I could see the changes in what we know. If you don't like that kind of thing, then just get the 2012 edition. It'll be outdated too, but you won't be as distracted. Just enjoy the fact that medicine is advancing faster than we can record it. It's really a fun book. Seriously.
His response: "I know."
My family has laughed about that over the years. This was in the days before parents said "very good" and "good job," but still, I think we can agree that he was a wet blanket. Some people just are. Book critics, especially, can be wet blankets. I thought of my dad when I read some of the reviews of A Field Guide to Germs: Revised and Updated. Apparently, some readers already know about all there is to know about microorganisms and history.
I sure don't. I had a vague idea from reading Rats, Lice and History as a kid and from observing RSV, strep, pinworms, giardia, roleola, scarlet fever, and more as a mom. If I wanted to make myself feel very old, I could dwell on the fact that the brother born just 2 1/2 years before me died a few hours after birth of rubella, and I knew a child with polio, and only my youngest child was vaccinated against chicken pox--because the others had it "naturally." And now--because I live in mosquito country and have children of childbearing age-- I'm beginning to worry about Zika. I feel old. But things change. In the 1995 edition that I just read, Zika fever is the very last entry, and the last words in the book are a parenthetical remark: "(You'll never see it, but we needed a Z.)"
If you're a wet-blanket type, this is something you'll complain about. A lot's happened since 1995. I liked the fact that I could see the changes in what we know. If you don't like that kind of thing, then just get the 2012 edition. It'll be outdated too, but you won't be as distracted. Just enjoy the fact that medicine is advancing faster than we can record it. It's really a fun book. Seriously.
April 8, 2013
Total snooze. Didn't finish. Annoying, dumbed-down descriptions of pathogens, arranged in, of all things, alphabetical order.
March 30, 2016
An encyclopedia of infectious diseases. Written with British wit, it was quite fun to read. I learned a good deal, and I have developed a new liking for nitrates (which keep us from getting botulism) and I now understand why you shouldn't eat shellfish in the summer, or feed the pigeons while sitting still on a park bench, and more. NOT, needless to say, for hypochondriacs, and in no sense complete, but a nice few-hour read.
February 18, 2014
I enjoyed the historical context but have too many bones to pick with the slightly sensationalist air of most of the writing. Probably would have been more entertaining if I hadn't simultaneously been learning the material in a very detailed, scientific context. Picking out the inaccuracies counts as studying, right?
July 13, 2019
Plenty to worry about here
This is the revised and updated edition of 2002 of the book originally published in 1995. The book is a "field guide" only in a metaphorical sense. After all, most of the subject matter is invisible to the unaided eye.
There's an overview in the Introduction of the role germs have played in the life of humans. It's a gruesome story. There follow 161 pages focusing on the individual germs or germ genuses in alphabetic order beginning with adenoviruses and ending with Zika fever, a rarely encounter viral disease which Biddle includes, he writes, because "we need a Z." Unless I miss my count there are 74 entries.
There's more than a micron of whimsy in the text as Biddle, who is also the author of A Field Guide to the Invisible and other works, tries to lighten up the mostly depressing subject matter with witticisms, e.g., "Untreated colds last a week; medical attention can end them after seven days." (p. 129) Each entry is between half a page and a couple of pages in length except for a few of greater interest, like polio which runs to almost five pages and includes a black and white pic of a young Elvis Presley happily getting vaccinated. There are 54 illustrations accompanying the text, many of them of old time cartoons and posters calling attention to various plagues and epidemics. Especially noteworthy are some drawings warning young men about syphilis, gonorrhea and other venereal diseases, showing women as culprits, or as Biddle has it, "Always one of Shorty's girls, never Shorty."
The strength of the book is in how wide is Biddle's range of interest and in the fact that each pathogen is identified in some detail including its common and scientific names, whether it is a virus or a bacterium, a protozoan or something else (worms and prions, for example). How the disease is transmitted, its symptoms and its history are also noted. One can learn something about the nature of disease and how our immune system copes from reading the text, which is informal but not flippant.
A weakness is that he doesn't consistently explain how viruses, bacteria and other contagions actually work their horrors, although in some cases he does. Bacteria that produce deadly toxins, like anthrax are identified as causing injury "to cells and tissue." And he explains that the HIV enters and renders helpless our T-4 lymphocyte cells by getting their DNA to produce viruses. This is how viruses in general work: they enter our cells, take over the machinery, and after a bit burst out, a thousand or so strong, each virus now headed for another cell. It can be surmised how after a while a lot of our cells are out of commission and can no longer do their job. In the case of the common cold viruses, apparently they don't commandeer enough of our cells (I presume along the lining of the nose and throat) to really do us any harm. Most of the discomfort, again presumably, comes from the body's reaction to the invasion, the fever, the sneezing, the coughing, etc. But Biddle is short on this sort of explanation. But he is not the only one. I am still looking for that popular book on disease that explains in detail and specifically how each pathogen does its harm to our bodies. Are we eaten, cell by cell or are we poisoned, or are we doing okay until the pathogen reaches some vital organ where it does...what?
We are told, and Biddle in part confirms this, that recurring diseases like colds or the flu come round regularly when the weather is right to keep us indoors and sneezing on one another in closed quarters, thus effectively spreading their particles happily about. However, he only alludes to the possibility that we may be harboring many, many germs within our bodies that only become pathogenic when we are weakened or when their season, as it were, comes round. My point is that it may be the case that we can get the flu every year or so or a cold without ever coming into contact with anybody else. We may harbor the germs for life. In some cases they become subdued by our immune system, but then they may mutate so that our system doesn't immediately recognize them and they go wild.
A nice confusion that Biddle clears up is how sometimes we get a cold or the flu (viral infections) but end up with a bacterial infection to boot. Although he doesn't explain specifically how this happens, apparently the flu or cold weakens us in some way that allows bacteria a chance to do us harm, which is why some patients insist on getting an antibiotic prescription from their doctor even though they have a viral infection.
Biddle addresses the mutation issue, fueled by the overuse of antibiotics so that our bodies and those of our cattle and pigs become virtual laboratories for the development of mutant strains of microbes immune to very antibiotics we are using.
As a bonafide, card-carrying germaphobe, I can tell you that this book is definitely worthwhile, and will spur you to even greater efforts at avoidance. Beware if you tend to the obsessive, however, since after reading this you may never stop washing your hands, and may never again leave the house.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “Understanding Evolution and Ourselves”
This is the revised and updated edition of 2002 of the book originally published in 1995. The book is a "field guide" only in a metaphorical sense. After all, most of the subject matter is invisible to the unaided eye.
There's an overview in the Introduction of the role germs have played in the life of humans. It's a gruesome story. There follow 161 pages focusing on the individual germs or germ genuses in alphabetic order beginning with adenoviruses and ending with Zika fever, a rarely encounter viral disease which Biddle includes, he writes, because "we need a Z." Unless I miss my count there are 74 entries.
There's more than a micron of whimsy in the text as Biddle, who is also the author of A Field Guide to the Invisible and other works, tries to lighten up the mostly depressing subject matter with witticisms, e.g., "Untreated colds last a week; medical attention can end them after seven days." (p. 129) Each entry is between half a page and a couple of pages in length except for a few of greater interest, like polio which runs to almost five pages and includes a black and white pic of a young Elvis Presley happily getting vaccinated. There are 54 illustrations accompanying the text, many of them of old time cartoons and posters calling attention to various plagues and epidemics. Especially noteworthy are some drawings warning young men about syphilis, gonorrhea and other venereal diseases, showing women as culprits, or as Biddle has it, "Always one of Shorty's girls, never Shorty."
The strength of the book is in how wide is Biddle's range of interest and in the fact that each pathogen is identified in some detail including its common and scientific names, whether it is a virus or a bacterium, a protozoan or something else (worms and prions, for example). How the disease is transmitted, its symptoms and its history are also noted. One can learn something about the nature of disease and how our immune system copes from reading the text, which is informal but not flippant.
A weakness is that he doesn't consistently explain how viruses, bacteria and other contagions actually work their horrors, although in some cases he does. Bacteria that produce deadly toxins, like anthrax are identified as causing injury "to cells and tissue." And he explains that the HIV enters and renders helpless our T-4 lymphocyte cells by getting their DNA to produce viruses. This is how viruses in general work: they enter our cells, take over the machinery, and after a bit burst out, a thousand or so strong, each virus now headed for another cell. It can be surmised how after a while a lot of our cells are out of commission and can no longer do their job. In the case of the common cold viruses, apparently they don't commandeer enough of our cells (I presume along the lining of the nose and throat) to really do us any harm. Most of the discomfort, again presumably, comes from the body's reaction to the invasion, the fever, the sneezing, the coughing, etc. But Biddle is short on this sort of explanation. But he is not the only one. I am still looking for that popular book on disease that explains in detail and specifically how each pathogen does its harm to our bodies. Are we eaten, cell by cell or are we poisoned, or are we doing okay until the pathogen reaches some vital organ where it does...what?
We are told, and Biddle in part confirms this, that recurring diseases like colds or the flu come round regularly when the weather is right to keep us indoors and sneezing on one another in closed quarters, thus effectively spreading their particles happily about. However, he only alludes to the possibility that we may be harboring many, many germs within our bodies that only become pathogenic when we are weakened or when their season, as it were, comes round. My point is that it may be the case that we can get the flu every year or so or a cold without ever coming into contact with anybody else. We may harbor the germs for life. In some cases they become subdued by our immune system, but then they may mutate so that our system doesn't immediately recognize them and they go wild.
A nice confusion that Biddle clears up is how sometimes we get a cold or the flu (viral infections) but end up with a bacterial infection to boot. Although he doesn't explain specifically how this happens, apparently the flu or cold weakens us in some way that allows bacteria a chance to do us harm, which is why some patients insist on getting an antibiotic prescription from their doctor even though they have a viral infection.
Biddle addresses the mutation issue, fueled by the overuse of antibiotics so that our bodies and those of our cattle and pigs become virtual laboratories for the development of mutant strains of microbes immune to very antibiotics we are using.
As a bonafide, card-carrying germaphobe, I can tell you that this book is definitely worthwhile, and will spur you to even greater efforts at avoidance. Beware if you tend to the obsessive, however, since after reading this you may never stop washing your hands, and may never again leave the house.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “Understanding Evolution and Ourselves”
August 22, 2026
The intro of this one was a brief sweep through the history of germs and medicine and set the stage for the detailed information that followed. The list of germs began at A and worked through to Z. I enjoyed the sprinkling of the author’s humor that I found throughout. The details were very clearly delineated and made for ease of understanding and fast progress through the text. I admit to some feelings of concern as I read about so many of the tiny things that can cause such big illnesses. And they’re everywhere. Definitely not an ideal read for those with hypochondriac tendencies. I did find it all to be incredibly interesting though.
October 29, 2022
Interesting account of the various germs bacteria and viruses that cause different diseases. Alphabetically arranged from adenoviruses to Zika fever. Bidder recounts the symptoms, the discovery of the cause and possible cures if there are any. The book was published in 2002; too late for Covid, but it does cover coronaviruses.
June 30, 2017
A little behind the times, and more than a little flippant, but a delightful review of the main diseases humans have fought through history. Highly recommended for science geeks and public health aficionados.
January 8, 2019
Very accessible book covering all sorts of germs that we see (mostly disease-causing, of course). Covering each item in alphabetical order, it discusses the history of the germ / disease, and what its current impact is.
May 20, 2020
Slightly dated book but very good information. I dinged the author because of the oft times idiotic and ill placed humor.
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August 12, 2011tl;dr I liked the content, but hated the format!
The layout of this book was unappealing to me because of how segregated the various diseases were. It was a quick and interesting read, but the alphabetical order it was presented in and the resulting incoherency made me feel as if I had whizzed through it all with very little that "stuck." I could also see that in many cases Biddle had to find creative ways to restate the same information. ex: "this disease results from bad sanitation." These redundancies became noticeable and irksome to me, as it seemed obvious that they would be eliminated through a more comprehensive writing style. Organizing these germs by what letter they start with would only be helpful if I were using this book as a dictionary or some sort of reference. Otherwise, it detracts from how much more interesting and memorable this book could be.
The layout of this book was unappealing to me because of how segregated the various diseases were. It was a quick and interesting read, but the alphabetical order it was presented in and the resulting incoherency made me feel as if I had whizzed through it all with very little that "stuck." I could also see that in many cases Biddle had to find creative ways to restate the same information. ex: "this disease results from bad sanitation." These redundancies became noticeable and irksome to me, as it seemed obvious that they would be eliminated through a more comprehensive writing style. Organizing these germs by what letter they start with would only be helpful if I were using this book as a dictionary or some sort of reference. Otherwise, it detracts from how much more interesting and memorable this book could be.
January 6, 2022
This is a collection of short essays on some of the bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites that live in and on humans, mostly to our detriment. Fortunately it is a rather small book compared to what a volume of those that coexist peacefully with us might be.
Each section gives a very brief look at the history and/or effects of the particular "germ". The author often includes commentary on the societal effects of outbreaks, how the "germ" was discovered, treatment, populations at risk, etc.
The updated version would probably be a better read, since some of the info here was a little outdated, but it was still enjoyable. It helps to have a background in microbiology as it feels very familiar if you do, but certainly that is not necessary for this book to be an quick, enjoyable read.
Great living book intro/jumping off point to a very timely subject.
Each section gives a very brief look at the history and/or effects of the particular "germ". The author often includes commentary on the societal effects of outbreaks, how the "germ" was discovered, treatment, populations at risk, etc.
The updated version would probably be a better read, since some of the info here was a little outdated, but it was still enjoyable. It helps to have a background in microbiology as it feels very familiar if you do, but certainly that is not necessary for this book to be an quick, enjoyable read.
Great living book intro/jumping off point to a very timely subject.
June 12, 2015
This is a good little introduction to various infections of all kinds, but I can't say that I learned a whole lot from it. It was mostly stuff that I knew already.
However, one fun thing that I learned was the origin of the word 'quarantine.' It came about in the 1300s when Venice required a mandatory isolation of travelers from plague-ridden countries. The length of isolation was 40 days, or 'quarantena' in Italian.
However, one fun thing that I learned was the origin of the word 'quarantine.' It came about in the 1300s when Venice required a mandatory isolation of travelers from plague-ridden countries. The length of isolation was 40 days, or 'quarantena' in Italian.
January 22, 2009
I'm reading sections of this for microbiology, but I'm going to read all of it for me. It's one I would've read sooner, had I known about it. Germs are especially interesting to me in their historical complexity.
January 17, 2009
Very germ related XD
January 9, 2010
awesome, i wish biddle wrote more books. he is an outstanding writer. brilliant.
July 27, 2010
Essential reference.
December 18, 2012
Interesting. All the "famous" contagious (or not) diseases and their effect on history, bringing things up today to where we stand now in relation to them. Not too wordy, short & sweet on each entry.
September 3, 2013
Mr. Biddle is a great science writer with a good sense of humor. This book is a very good general overview of common diseases.
April 11, 2014
Interesting reading.... A few mistakes. Jim Henson died of GAS not pneumococcus . Historical references most interesting
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