Skip to content

Booksellers & Trade Customers: Sign up for online bulk buying at trade.atlanticbooks.com for wholesale discounts

Booksellers: Create Account on our B2B Portal for wholesale discounts

So Very Small

by Thomas Levenson
Save 27% Save 27%
Current price ₹2,510.00
Original price ₹3,430.00
Original price ₹3,430.00
Original price ₹3,430.00
(-27%)
₹2,510.00
Current price ₹2,510.00

Imported Edition - Ships in 18-21 Days

Free Shipping in India on orders above Rs. 500

Request Bulk Quantity Quote
+91
Book cover type: Hardcover
  • ISBN13: 9780593242735
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • Subject: N/A
  • Publisher: Random House Inc
  • Publisher Imprint: Random House Inc
  • Publication Date:
  • Pages: 368
  • Original Price: USD 35.0
  • Language: English
  • Edition: N/A
  • Item Weight: 752 grams
  • BISAC Subject(s): World, Life Sciences / Bacteriology, and Disease & Health Issues

"An elegant, wide-ranging history" (The New York Review of Books) of the centuries-long quest to discover the critical role of germs in disease thatreveals as much about human reasoning--and the pitfalls of ego--as it does about microbes.

"Levenson takes readers through an entertaining . . . journey of missed opportunities in microbiology and the eventual advances that arose in this field."--Science

Scientists and enthusiastic amateurs first confirmed the existence of living things invisible to the human eye in the late seventeenth century. So why did it take two centuries to connect microbes to disease? As late as the Civil War in the 1860s, most soldiers who perished died not on the battlefield but of infected wounds, typhoid, and other diseases. Twenty years later, the outcome might have been different, following one of the most radical intellectual transformations in history: germ theory, the recognition that the tiniest forms of life have been humankind's greatest killers. It was a discovery centuries in the making, and it transformed modern life and public health.

As Thomas Levenson reveals in this globe-spanning history, it has everything to do with how we see ourselves. For centuries, people in the West, believing themselves to hold God-given dominion over nature, thought too much of humanity and too little of microbes to believe they could take us down. When nineteenth-century scientists finally made the connection, life-saving methods to control infections and contain outbreaks soon followed. The next big break came with the birth of the antibiotic era in the 1930s. And yet, less than a century later, the promise of the antibiotic revolution is already receding due to years of overuse. Is our self-confidence getting the better of us again?

So Very Small follows the thread of human ingenuity and hubris across centuries--along the way peering into microscopes, spelunking down sewers, visiting army hospitals, traipsing across sheep fields, and more--to show how we came to understand the microbial environment and how little we understand ourselves. Levenson traces how and why ideas are pursued, accepted, or ignored--and hence how human habits of mind can, so often, make it terribly hard to ask the right questions.

Thomas Levenson is a professor of science writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of several books, including Money for Nothing, The Hunt for Vulcan, Einstein in Berlin, and Newton and the Counterfeiter. He has also made ten feature-length documentaries (including a two-hour Nova program on Albert Einstein), for which he has won numerous awards.

Trusted for over 49 years

Family Owned Company

Secure Payment

All Major Credit Cards/Debit Cards/UPI & More Accepted

New & Authentic Products

India's Largest Distributor

Need Support?

Whatsapp Us