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Quiz: How much do you know about animal senses?

The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

I Contain Multitudes

A thrilling, witty, genre-busting book on microbes, one of science’s hottest topics, by a debut writer with a huge following.

Super-interesting... He just keeps imparting one surprising, fascinating insight after the next. I Contain Multitudes is science journalism at its best

[A] marvellous, thrilling and richly annotated book… I call it marvellous: everything about the microbial world is to be marvelled at. And it is a page-turner in a very old-fashioned sense. All life is here, and death too, and sex and violence, including deviations of which you had never dreamed ... We have an inner life, in every sense, and are the richer for it: richer still for this witty and compelling book.

Beyond fascinating. An amazing book. It'll change the way you think about the world. It'll change who you think you are.

I Contain Multitudes makes the importance of popularising science…sparklingly clear... From his vibrant introduction to his witty endnotes, Yong’s expertise and narration hold no less wonder than a sacred text.

Masterful ... smart, canny, and often quite beautiful ... In the realm of the life sciences there is a noble tradition of popular books that ... have reshaped our view of the world ... In my own reading I think of Schrödinger’s What is Life, Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene and, more recently, Nick Lane’s The Vital Question. Among such company, I Contain Multitudes can hold its head high.

I Contain Multitudes has a terrific story to tell … Ed Yong is a talented British science writer … his first book covers a huge amount of microscopic territory in clear, strong, often epigrammatic prose … He is infectiously enthusiastic about microbes and he describes them with verve … Even the book’s endnotes are rich with interesting asides, swarming with interesting sidelights, a teeming microbial world.

I also very much enjoyed and admired I Contain Multitudes.

An account that is far, far more entertaining than an exploration of microbes should be.

[An] utterly absorbing and hugely important book… [Yong] is an extraordinary adept guide. Writing with lightness and panache, he has a knack of explain complex science in terms that are both easy to understand and totally enthralling… I Contain Multitudes is popular science writing at its best. Reading this book will make you view the world differently.

[A] densely fascinating and elegant book… Yong’s book is vividly enjoyable.

[Yong is] one of our best and brightest popularisers of science. Yong’s boundless curiosity and infectious enthusiasm make him the perfect guide to complex scientific ideas, while the clarity and concision of his writing ensure that the lay reader is not made to fell unduly daunted… Excellent book’

Ed Yong has done something beautiful, and unlikely: he’s rendered the unseen world of bacteria thrilling, captivating and highly entertaining. This is a much-needed guide to the hidden kingdom that dominates life on Earth. It cuts through all the buzzwordy hooey and flakey hype of microbiomes with a scientifically steady hand, but told with an infectious sense of awe.

Adam Rutherford, broadcaster and author of Creation

Yong vividly describes the intricate alliances forged by microbes with every other organism on the planet… The most delightful part of Yong’s book is that he does not just tell the stories of microbiomes, he also introduces readers to dozens of the scientists studying them… Their stories and conversations radiate the excitement of unlocking new secrets.

‘I Contain Multitudes is wonderful. Deeply strange, true, funny, beautifully written’

[It] bowls along wonderfully... His hero, Sir David [Attenborough], would surely approve.

Ed Yong’s magnificent revaluation of bacteriology, I Contain Multitudes, counsels humility for student doctors like me: modern medicine’s pathogens may be the future’s therapeutics.

A science journalist’s first book is an excellent, vivid introduction to the all-enveloping realm of our secret sharers.

Yong delves into our deepest, darkest nooks and crannies to shed new light on what it is to be human.

Ed Yong has written a riveting account of the microbes that make the world work. I Contain Multitudes will change the way you look at yourself --- and just about everything else.

Elizabeth Kolbert, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Sixth Extinction

Offer[s] engrossing—and gross—details about how an invisible world shapes our species…Mr. Yong’s book lives up to its title, containing multitudes of facts presented in graceful, accessible prose….The author wonderfully turns to the humanities again and again to enrich the book’s scientific detail…And he’s funny.

I Contain Multitudes changes you the way all great science writing does. You become disoriented, looking at the world around you in a new way. With vivid tales and graceful explanations, Ed Yong reveals how the living things we see around us are wildly complex collectives.

Yong has captured the essence of this exciting field, expressing the enthusiasm and wonder that the scientific community feels when working with the microbiome. It is rare that a writer has the capacity to speak to the public and the scientific world with equanimity; Yong has succeeded in delivering a compelling and informative exploration of a vast research field and a fundamental work that can stand as textbook and a rip-roaring read!

Professor Jack Gilbert, University of Chicago

With a simply wonderful book, Ed Yong opens the doorway to a hidden world around and inside us. He's smart, he's witty, and he's at the cutting edge. You could not get a better guide.

Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist Strikes Back and Messy

Ed Yong is one of our finest young explainers of science—wicked smart, broadly informed, sly, savvy, so illuminating. And this is an encyclopedia of fascinations—a teeming intellectual ecosystem, a keen book on the intricacies of the microbiome and more.

David Quammen, author of The Song of the Dodo and Spillover

This compelling and beautifully written book will change the way people look at the world around, and within, them. It provides an insight into the latest research in the field, and into the people doing the work, that is unmatched by any other book on the microbiome to date. Certainly among the best books in an increasingly crowded field and written with a true passion for and understanding of the microbiome.

Professor Rob Knight, University of California

A whistle-stop tour of the microbial world for the non-expert… Yong has won numerous awards for his science writing…it doesn’t take long to realise why.

A marvellous book! Ed Yong’s brilliant gift for storytelling and precise writing about science converge in I Contain Multitudes to make the invisible and tiny both visible and mighty. A unique, entertaining, and smart read.

Jeff Vandermeer, author of the Southern Reach Trilogy

[A] magnificent revaluation of bacteriology.

A state-of-the art look at what we know about microbes… Yong makes difficult concepts and scientific terms easy to understand – and his excitement at the variety and wonder of nature makes him an enthusiastic and engaging writer’

The complex relationships between microbes and their environments are explored with rigour and humour.

A deep and sensible dive in to this complex and fascinating dimension of biology.

[It] is superbly judged. It brilliantly synthesises the surprising and recently-revealed inter-dependencies of visible and invisible organisms… Look out for it on numerous book prize shortlists in 2017.

Yong will make you think about yourself – and the world around you – in a different way.

It is a fascinating account of the unseen creatures that live within and all around us. Yong takes us on this journey through the microscope to discover the most recent research from scientists all round the world and tell us of the secrets that are being discovered about microbes… Yong writes with an engaging and eloquent style and makes the science in here really accessible. Well worth reading.

Yong’s enthusiasm for bacteria is infectious, as he describes the beauty of luminescent bacteria in the Hawaiian bobtail squid and the benefits of our microscopic neighbours.

A master class in popular scientific education.

Yong made me think “wow” over and over again. He tells us that there is a universe of tiny things. We should think about them.

Ed Yong is an award-winning science writer who reports for The Atlantic. His blog, Not Exactly Rocket Science, is hosted by National Geographic, and his work has also appeared in Wired, the New York Times, Nature, the BBC, New Scientist, Scientific American, the Guardian, The Times and more. He lives in London. 
 
You can find him on twitter @edyong209 and sign up to his weekly newsletter, The Ed's Up, on http://tinyletter.com/edyong209/.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER FROM THE WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE 
 
 Your body is teeming with tens of trillions of microbes. It's an entire world, a colony full of life. 
 
 In other words, you contain multitudes. 
 
 They sculpt our organs, protect us from diseases, guide our behaviour, and bombard us with their genes. They also hold the key to understanding all life on earth. 
 
 In I Contain Multitudes, Ed Yong opens our eyes and invites us to marvel at ourselves and other animals in a new light, less as individuals and more as thriving ecosystems. 
 
 You'll never think about your mind, body or preferences in the same way again. 
 
 'Super-interesting... He just keeps imparting one surprising, fascinating insight after the next. I Contain Multitudes is science journalism at its best' Bill Gates 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE 2017 
 SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2017

Ed Yong

Standing out even during a recent golden age of nature writing, Ed Yong dazzles with a deeply considered exploration of the many modes of sensory perception that life has evolved to navigate the world, written with exhilarating freshness

Winner of 2023 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

[A] wondrous, lustrous, captivating book: Ed Yong's An Immense World... left me awed and stunned - and revolted by humanity's destructive pride and planetary abuse

Times Literary Supplement, *Books of the Year*

Full of extraordinary discoveries... an encyclopaedic, rigorously researched journey... recasts the world in breath-taking, bewildering immensity

A hymn to the wonders of evolution... fascinating

Yong succeeds in bringing a sense of grandeur to life on every scale

Not just a study of the myriad wonders of the natural world - though wondrous they are - but also a panoramic, complex portrait of the sensory capacities that underpin a multitude of life. ... In uncovering all this, Yong also shows why we should give more thought to our place in the world.

An Immense World is an exploration of the ways in which our fellow creatures navigate, understand and interact with one another and their environment through senses. ... The result is so mind-boggling, it's tempting to say 'forget looking in deep space for astonishment'. But let's not do that. Let's continue searching there while also paying better attention to the miracles right under our noses. Yong's marvellous book shows us how.

This book lifts the shroud on previously invisible dimensions of the world itself

A magic well of surprising, enlightening discoveries about the sensory worlds of other species... A brilliant book, marvellous and mesmerizing

Jennifer Ackerman, author of The Genius of Birds

A stunning achievement - steeped in science but suffused with magic

Siddhartha Mukherjee, author The Emperor of All Maladies

A delight... it prompts a radical rethink about the limits of what we know - what the world is, even. It is quite a book. And, I felt, putting it down, quite a world

I love this book. Reading it is a delightful sensory experience... I truly enjoyed Yong's adventures in Wonderland!

A journal of discovery and animal magic, a sensory exploration that is a joy to read

Magnificent - an unbelievably immersive and mind-blowing account of how other animals experience our world

Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees and The Inner Life of Animals

Like stepping into a new kind of Alice in Wonderland. The perfect mixture of revelation, curiosity, science, beautiful prose and buckets full of wonders

Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World

A cornucopia of wonders... a fascinating reminder of the humbling truth that most of what happens among life forms on Earth is beyond our ken

An expansive, constantly revelatory exploration of the biosphere's sensorium... Ed Yong is my favourite contemporary science writer

William Gibson, author of Neuromancer and The Peripheral

Every page finds the reader mouthing quiet whoa's, as the world she thought she knew opens out into a hundred others, improbable, strange, and fabulous.

An Immense World took my hand and brought me on a journey I'll never forget. After reading this book, I'll never look at our planet the same way again

Clint Smith, author of How the Word is Passed

A whirlwind tour of animal perceptual abilities. A magnificent book

Frans de Waal, author of Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist

A tour of places that are, in essence, unknowable... Yet Yong...proves an outstanding guide... Beautifully written and painstakingly researched... this fantastic book leaves you wondering what else is left to be discovered

Ed Yong's fascinating new book on the complex behaviours of creatures uncovers a universe of unfathomable beauty... Not since Oliver Morton's masterpiece of popular science Eating the Sun (2007) has a book so persuasively made the case that the Earth is greater than we know

Remarkable... a delight, a book that prompts awe at the world around us

A tour of our own world as we may never experience it

This book will reignite your sense of wonder and appreciation for our amazing planet

Immaculately researched, elegantly written, iconoclastic and compulsively readable

[Yong's] skills are on full display here, as he clearly and succinctly sketches out complex scientific and philosophical ideas in terms that are understandable for the lay reader

Yong ... has a rare ability to break down overwhelming amounts of information into compelling, digestible detail. His An Immense World will make you question everything you thought you knew about how non-human animals perceive our shared world.

One of President Barack Obama's 'favourite books of 2022'

Remarkable ... manages to be both a celebration of our species' genius for observation while also revealing how narrow and partial our 'sense' of things. Yong reveals how life is much greater than we can images.

Yong's colourful, character-filled writing reveals a multidimensional world that has hitherto remained hidden to us

This book welcomes us into previously unfathomable dimensions - the world as it is truly perceived by other animals

Ed Yong's book is a celebration of sights and sounds, smells and tastes, and the ways different animals exist on the planet we all share. Yong blends scientific study and elegant prose to transform textbook fodder into an excting read

Mind-expanding…a non-fiction foray into the extraordinary world of animal senses… Sensational stuff

I recommend this book all the time, wholeheartedly, to everyone. It’s a fascinating, mind-altering exploration of animal senses… vital in this moment of ecological devastation and waning biodiversity

An insight into the extraordinary sensory worlds of other animals, inviting the reader to step outside their sensory bubble to experience previously unfathomable dimensions of perception

How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

**SUNDAY TIMES and NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** 
 
This is our world, as you've never seen it before. 
 
The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving only a tiny sliver of this world. 
 
In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, welcoming us into previously unfathomable dimensions - the world as it is truly perceived by other animals. Showing us that in order to understand our world we don't need to travel to other places; we need to see through other eyes. 
 
A NEW YORK TIMES, GUARDIAN, ECONOMIST, SPECTATOR, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT and NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 
 
**Winner of 2023 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction** 
 
'Immersive and mind-blowing' Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees 
 
'A book that prompts awe at the world around us' Sunday Times 
 
'Suffused with magic' Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Song of the Cell 
 
'Magnificent' Guardian

Ed Yong

Praise for An Immense World

Standing out even during a recent golden age of nature writing, Ed Yong dazzles with a deeply considered exploration of the many modes of sensory perception that life has evolved to navigate the world, wri ...

[A] wondrous, lustrous, captivating book: Ed Yong's An Immense World... left me awed and stunned - and revolted by humanity's destructive pride and planetary abuse

Full of extraordinary discoveries... an encyclopaedic, rigorously researched journey... recasts the world in breath-taking, bewildering immensity

Standing out even during a recent golden age of nature writing, Ed Yong dazzles with a deeply considered exploration of the many modes of sensory perception that life has evolved to navigate the world, wri ...

[A] wondrous, lustrous, captivating book: Ed Yong's An Immense World... left me awed and stunned - and revolted by humanity's destructive pride and planetary abuse

Full of extraordinary discoveries... an encyclopaedic, rigorously researched journey... recasts the world in breath-taking, bewildering immensity

Standing out even during a recent golden age of nature writing, Ed Yong dazzles with a deeply considered exploration of the many modes of sensory perception that life has evolved to navigate the world, wri ...

[A] wondrous, lustrous, captivating book: Ed Yong's An Immense World... left me awed and stunned - and revolted by humanity's destructive pride and planetary abuse

Full of extraordinary discoveries... an encyclopaedic, rigorously researched journey... recasts the world in breath-taking, bewildering immensity

Books by Ed Yong

Articles featuring Ed Yong

Quiz: How much do you know about animal senses?

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