A noted medical historian places recent outbreaks of deadly diseases in historical perspective, with accounts of other alarming and recurring diseases throughout history and of the ways in which humans have adapted. Reprint. 17,500 first printing.

A popular account of the invisible world of microbes and their impact on mankind.

The COVID-19 pandemic that swept the planet in the early 2020s killed more than six million, delivered unimaginable human suffering and $22 trillion in lost global growth. We weren't prepared and should have been.Unraveling the secrets of microbes, an invisible parallel universe of tiny life forms all around us, is central to managing the big twenty-first-century challenges of pandemics, bioterrorism, food security and climate change. Scientists, technologists, entrepreneurs and political leaders are racing to decode this biological realm with powerful new tools to extend human lifespans and make the world safer and more prosperous. Yet such technologies need to be handled with care. The price of getting this wrong will be unbearable.Man Versus Microbe is about humanity's competitive, symbiotic and precarious relationship with the microbial world. Brian Bremner (Senior Executive Editor, Bloomberg) offers a book on the exhilarating fields of synthetic biology and genetics, abundant with material on emerging technologies to deepen one's understanding of how virus hunters chase bugs or how geneticists unlock the workings of a microbe's constituent DNA. This book is for readers who want to learn more about humanity's fight to contain future pandemics and better understand the risks and opportunities of living in the world of microbes. After navigating through a disruptive pandemic, we are all amateur epidemiologists now.

This fully updated and revised edition of Professor Postgate's best-selling book provides an inspiring introduction to the fascinating world of microbes and their profound influence on man and the environment we live in. Microbes are everywhere. In the air, in soil, in water, on our skin and hair, in our mouths and intestines, on and in the food we eat. They make the soil fertile; they clean up the environment; they change, often improve, our food; they make vitamins for us inside ourselves; some protect us from less desirable microbes. As 'germs', microbes are regarded as nasty, because a few can cause disease, a few can spoil food, a few can destroy valuable materials. Only when such misfortunes occur are most people conscious of microbes at all. Yet collectively, microbes present a fascinating world of invisible, or barely visible, creatures, which together encompass all the processes of which terrestrial life is capable; creatures which have had, and continue to have, profound effects on our lives and surroundings. In this book, John Postgate explains to ordinary non-scientist readers the impact this invisible community has on our everyday lives, and conveys the excitement microbes can generate in those who study them.