Product Description
From the ravages of the Ebola virus in Zaire to outbreaks of pneumonic plague in India and drug-resistant TB in New York City, contagious diseases are fighting back against once-unconquerable modern medicine. Public concern about infectious disease is on the rise as newspapers trumpet the arrivals of new germs and the reemergence of old ones.In A Field Guide to Germs, Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Wayne Biddle brings readers face to face with nearly one hundred of the best-known (in terms of prevalence, power, historical importance, or even literary interest) of the myriad pathogens that live in and around the human population. Along with physical descriptions of the organisms and the afflictions they cause, the author provides folklore, philosophy, history, and such illustrations as nineteenth century drawings of plague-induced panic, microscopic photographs of HIV and Ebola, and wartime posters warning servicemen against syphilis and gonorrhea.From cholera to chlamydia, TB to HIV, bubonic plague to Lyme disease, rabies to Congo-Crimean encephalitis, anthrax to Zika fever, and back to good old rhinitis (the common cold), A Field Guide to Germs is both a handy reference work to better understand today's headlines and a fascinating look at the astonishing impact of micro-organisms on social and political history.

Amazon.com Review
From the title alone, you know it's going to be good. Biddle delves into anthrax and arboviruses, cholera and chlamydia, diphtheria, dengue, and dysentery, and on through the disease-ridden alphabet to Zika fever. Biddle explains in graphic detail the causes, symptoms and treatments for these germs, and it's all jolly good middle-of-the-night reading. You might become somewhat phobic if you read it from cover to cover, but no one will be more scintillating at parties.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 17 reviews)

Have a Field Day With this Guide by Spudman (Pasadena, MD United States)

5 Stars
November 09, 2009
The guide begins with adenoviruses and ends with zika fever, an exotic African affliction. In between those two are 71 eclectic essays about bacteria, viruses, fungi and a few other microorganisms of interest. With literally millions of topics from which to choose, how did Biddle select these chosen few? He tells us in the introduction that he used prevalence, power, and worry factor to narrow the field from the billions of potential organisms. Zika fever is included because he needed a "z". In the sometimes laborious introduction (laborious because the reader is impatient to dig into the main course) the author philosophizes about the doctor/patient relationship, musing how just seeing a doctor can be palliative. Another thought, introduced here and repeated in subsequent essays, is the tendency of epidemics to affect the poor disproportionately, though as the reader will learn many of our buggy companions prey on us humans indiscriminately. Like a tour guide giving preparatory instructions, Biddle defines for the reader terms like germs, pathogens, antibiotics and mutagens. After being advised to put away the disinfectant soaps, and turn off the television news, we fasten our seatbelts for an incredible ride on a slow moving train observing more than we can possible retain or remember. Then again, as Biddle reminds us, "Even a little information is better than zip." Ever fall asleep reading a science textbook? Just looking at the cover knocks me out. This book not only holds the reader's rapt attention, but it also amuses, entertains, and teaches along the way. The author uses humor, understatement and mildly shocking irreverence to keep the text lively and the anticipatory reader alert. With thoughtful foresight the author's essays are mostly only one or two pages in length. Longer essays might get too wordy, too complicated, and too technical and jargon laden. Conversely the short chapters mean more topics can be covered, a glut of riches that can dull and inhibit the memory. I like that the author, a Johns Hopkins University faculty member, includes the etymologies and origins of most disease names. He also frames the diseases with a historical perspective that's both fascinating and illuminating.

I really love this book! by Roy A. Birk

5 Stars
October 18, 2007
Any time I read about a sickness in the paper, I run to Biddle's A Field Guide to Germs to look it up. Quite recently, E. coli and Staphylococcus have gotten my attention, and I've found Biddle's write-ups in both cases to be very informative and entertaining. This is an excellent book to have in your collection.

some misinformatoin by toucan sam

2 Stars
September 20, 2007
I've read only a few of the germ chapters described in this text and chose to read no more after encountering some blatantly incorrect information. For instance, with Rabies, the author states humans can only contract the disease if bitten by a rabid animal. Not true. Infection can be transmitted through the saliva of an infected animal or another human by contacting saliva with an open wound or mucus membrane. The author also states that humans are a dead end for the virus because we can't infect others. Absolutely not true. Visit a hospital with a rabies patient and you'll likely get a very different opinion as to the danger of the virus spreading. Overall, the information felt unverified and dashed off. Making this a primer for some I suppose but hardly a definitive much less accurate work.

Plenty to worry about here by Dennis Littrell (SoCal)

4 Stars
February 24, 2006
This is the revised and updated edition of 2002 of the book originally published in 1995. The book is a "field guide" only in a metaphorical sense. After all, most of the subject matter is invisible to the unaided eye. There's an overview in the Introduction of the role germs have played in the life of humans. It's a gruesome story. There follow 161 pages focusing on the individual germs or germ genuses in alphabetic order beginning with adenoviruses and ending with Zika fever, a rarely encounter viral disease which Biddle includes, he writes, because "we need a Z." Unless I miss my count there are 74 entries. There's more than a micron of whimsy in the text as Biddle, who is also the author of A Field Guide to the Invisible and other works, tries to lighten up the mostly depressing subject matter with witticisms, e.g., "Untreated colds last a week; medical attention can end them after seven days." (p. 129) Each entry is between half a page and a couple of pages in length except for a few of greater interest, like polio which runs to almost five pages and includes a black and white pic of a young Elvis Presley happily getting vaccinated. There are 54 illustrations accompanying the text, many of them of old time cartoons and posters calling attention to various plagues and epidemics. Especially noteworthy are some drawings warning young men about syphilis, gonorrhea and other venereal diseases, showing women as culprits, or as Biddle has it, "Always one of Shorty's girls, never Shorty." The strength of the book is in how wide is Biddle's range of interest and in the fact that each pathogen is identified in some detail including its common and scientific names, whether it is a virus or a bacterium, a protozoan or something else (worms and prions, for example). How the disease is transmitted, its symptoms and its history are also noted. One can learn something about the nature of disease and how our immune system copes from reading the text, which is informal but not flippant. A weakness is that he doesn't consistently explain how viruses, bacteria and other contagions actually work their horrors, although in some cases he does. Bacteria that produce deadly toxins, like anthrax are identified as causing injury "to cells and tissue." And he explains that the HIV enters and renders helpless our T-4 lymphocyte cells by getting their DNA to produce viruses. This is how viruses in general work: they enter our cells, take over the machinery, and after a bit burst out, a thousand or so strong, each virus now headed for another cell. It can be surmised how after a while a lot of our cells are out of commission and can no longer do their job. In the case of the common cold viruses, apparently they don't commandeer enough of our cells (I presume along the lining of the nose and throat) to really do us any harm. Most of the discomfort, again presumably, comes from the body's reaction to the invasion, the fever, the sneezing, the coughing, etc. But Biddle is short on this sort of explanation. But he is not the only one. I am still looking for that popular book on disease that explains in detail and specifically how each pathogen does its harm to our bodies. Are we eaten, cell by cell or are we poisoned, or are we doing okay until the pathogen reaches some vital organ where it does...what? We are told, and Biddle in part confirms this, that recurring diseases like colds or the flu come round regularly when the weather is right to keep us indoors and sneezing on one another in closed quarters, thus effectively spreading their particles happily about. However, he only alludes to the possibility that we may be harboring many, many germs within our bodies that only become pathogenic when we are weakened or when their season, as it were, comes round. My point is that it may be the case that we can get the flu every year or so or a cold without ever coming into contact with anybody else. We may harbor the germs for life. In some cases they become subdued by our immune system, but then they may mutate so that our system doesn't immediately recognize them and they go wild. A nice confusion that Biddle clears up is how sometimes we get a cold or the flu (viral infections) but end up with a bacterial infection to boot. Although he doesn't explain specifically how this happens, apparently the flu or cold weakens us in some way that allows bacteria a chance to do us harm, which is why some patients insist on getting an antibiotic prescription from their doctor even though they have a viral infection. Biddle addresses the mutation issue, fueled by the overuse of antibiotics so that our bodies and those of our cattle and pigs become virtual laboratories for the development of mutant strains of microbes immune to very antibiotics we are using. As a bonafide, card-carrying germaphobe, I can tell you that this book is definitely worthwhile, and will spur you to even greater efforts at avoidance. Beware if you tend to the obsessive, however, since after reading this you may never stop washing your hands, and may never again leave the house.

Good for those in the field, and for the curious by M. S. Jones (Sherman Oaks, CA USA)

4 Stars
January 19, 2004
Usually, I approach texts such as this with some trepidation, because they have a tendancy of being the author's perception as well as some half-baked theory of a conspiracy.This book is objective, clear-cut, and explains in simple terminology, the story behind our most common "bugs" and the diseases they cause.If you are intrigued by the field of diseases, I suggest you check this one out.Also check out "Killer Germs" (Barry & David Zimmerman) for something more in depth and historical.

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