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I loved Yong's coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in The Atlantic in 2020 and 2021, and I was excited to see how he would take this broad topic and make it accessible. For the most part, he succeeds. He clearly communicates his key theses, from the small percentage of microbes that are true pathogens (and how difficult/inaccurate it is to label most microbes as "good" or "bad") to the ways that microbes work in tandem with other organisms in a multitude of ways. The microbiome is both fascinating and complex, and Yong helps the reader understand many of the nuances of research in this area, at least at a basic layperson's level, and how various discoveries aren't always as straightforward as they initially seem.
Even with Yong's gift for breaking out complex topics, the book is still a dense work of nonfiction that requires attention if you want to deeply understand it. There were pros and cons to absorbing this via audiobook. On the one hand, as I told several people, the British narrator explaining the details of microbes made it feel somewhat like David Attenborough calmly describing the natural world, this time on a microscopic scale, which I personally found enjoyable. On the other hand, the relentless pace of an audiobook means you might not fully understand a concept before the book moves on, and you have to decide if it's worth going back to try to grasp it more fully. Also, there were many spots where lines and phrases had clearly been re-recorded, unfortunately with different audio quality, which disrupted the listening experience and made it even harder to follow a complete thought.
I wouldn't recommend this to everyone, but I found it both interesting and valuable for better understanding the world around me. For me, it was definitely worth the listen.
Even with Yong's gift for breaking out complex topics, the book is still a dense work of nonfiction that requires attention if you want to deeply understand it. There were pros and cons to absorbing this via audiobook. On the one hand, as I told several people, the British narrator explaining the details of microbes made it feel somewhat like David Attenborough calmly describing the natural world, this time on a microscopic scale, which I personally found enjoyable. On the other hand, the relentless pace of an audiobook means you might not fully understand a concept before the book moves on, and you have to decide if it's worth going back to try to grasp it more fully. Also, there were many spots where lines and phrases had clearly been re-recorded, unfortunately with different audio quality, which disrupted the listening experience and made it even harder to follow a complete thought.
I wouldn't recommend this to everyone, but I found it both interesting and valuable for better understanding the world around me. For me, it was definitely worth the listen.