I read Ed Yong’s latest book, An Immense World, prior to this one, and loved the wide array of facts and his sense of humor. It was in my top 10 books last year! 

So I was in the mood for his exact science writing style & to be blown away w science facts, but I Contain Multitudes didnt quite deliver. For one thing, it’s less funny than AIW, likely bc it was his first book and hadn’t fully solidified his style yet. Which is fine! But I missed that. 

The main issue: AIW covers sooo many senses and areas of inquiry that I never got bored or tired. Microbes are a bit niche, even if they are also quite expansive in their impact. But with less humor and a more niche topic in a long book, I did get tired of learning about microbes about 75% in. It’s all quite technical as well - certainly accessible language and all, but microbe experiments by nature tend to be rather technical. I rallied bc my friend convinced me to, and I wasn’t planning to DNF even if I took a long break. 

But that’s why this one is 4 stars for me, whereas An Immense World was all the stars. 

This was clearly deeply researched!!! Super great history, very good to know. 

The half star ding is solely because it was dense as hell, and not super accessible. Still, a must read!!!