This book explores the centuries-long journey to understand the role of germs in disease, revealing how human biases and overconfidence hindered scientific progress. From the discovery of microbes to the antibiotic era and beyond, it examines the interplay between hubris, human ingenuity, and our understanding of the microbial world.

This book is informative, entertaining, and sometimes heart-wrenching. The progress of medicine during the nineteenth century was painfully slow, as this book demonstrates, and far too many lives were lost that could have been saved if people had trusted evidence rather than tradition. The book also stresses the importance of humility as we’re faced with the evolution of drug-resistant strains of infectious diseases, now and in the future.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

I loved this book. It has great story-telling that kept me engaged from start to finish. I found the story very compelling and that it read like a great novel rather than non-fiction. I found the pacing very good, especially considering the amount of detail given. There were also some great passages that warranted re-reads. At times I did find the writing overly literary for my taste but this didn’t affect how I felt about the book. Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for the advance reader copy.

this was a good book and it was interesting, informative, and taught a lot. I learned a lot of information, but given the nature of this book, it was a bit dense with lots of information, which was hard to get through at times

Thank you to NetGalley, to the author, and to the publisher for this complimentary ARC in exchange for my honest review!!!