A riveting exploration of how microbes are transforming the way we see nature and ourselves - and could revolutionize agriculture and medicine.
Prepare to set aside what you think you know about yourself and microbes. Good health - for people and for plants - depends on Earth's smallest creatures. The Hidden Half of Nature tells the story of our tangled relationship with microbes and their potential to revolutionize agriculture and medicine, from garden to gut.
When David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé decide to restore life into their barren yard by creating a garden, dead dirt threatens their dream. As a cure, they feed their soil a steady diet of organic matter. The results impress them. In short order, the much-maligned microbes transform their bleak yard into a flourishing Eden. Beneath their feet, beneficial microbes and plant roots continuously exchange a vast array of essential compounds. The authors soon learn that this miniaturized commerce is central to botanical life's master strategy for defense and health.
They are abruptly plunged further into investigating microbes when Biklé is diagnosed with cancer. Here, they discover an unsettling truth. An armada of bacteria (our microbiome) sails the seas of our gut, enabling our immune system to sort microbial friends from foes. But when our gut microbiome goes awry, our health can go with it. The authors also discover startling insights into the similarities between plant roots and the human gut.
We are not what we eat. We are all - for better or worse - the products of what our microbes eat. This leads to a radical reconceptualization of our relationship to the natural world: By cultivating beneficial microbes, we can rebuild soil fertility and help turn back the modern plague of chronic diseases. The Hidden Half of Nature reveals how to transform agriculture and medicine - by merging the mind of an ecologist with the care of a gardener and the skill of a doctor.
Audible Sample
Audible Sample
The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health
Audible Audiobook – UnabridgedDavid R. Montgomery (Author), Anne Bikle (Author), & 2 more
4.8 out of 5 stars 65 customer reviews
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The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health
David R. Montgomery (Author), Anne Bikle (Author), LJ Ganser (Narrator)
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Product details
Audible Audiobook
Listening Length: 10 hours and 42 minutes
Program Type: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Publisher: Audible Studios
Audible.com Release Date: December 23, 2015
Whispersync for Voice: Ready
Language: English, English
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Top Reviews
lyndonbrecht
5.0 out of 5 starsOn the crucial importance of healthy microbiota in soil and human bodies. It really is important to know something about.December 19, 2015
Format: Hardcover
This is a more complex book than meets the eye. I thought it would be about the quite r4ecent scientific and medical investigations of the human microbiome, which increasingly looks central to human health. It is that, but this is a highly personal book that mixes health of the earth--soil--and health of a person, sort of an inside soil and outside soil, literally grounded in the authors' garden in Seattle. The book presents equal parts personal experience and hard science, which is described clearly and should be accessible to readers--both soil and human microbiomes are far, far more complex than most people appreciate.
The book starts with a description of the authors' (the authors are married, and both have extensive backgrounds in science) rebuilding poor soil in their Seattle house, to make a garden. To be brief (the book describes this very well and gardeners will like it) it quickly became fertile and growth exploded, as did unanticipated populations of birds, insects and visiting mammals, all stemming from an enriched microbiota (which includes bacteria, fungi and other folks). A healthy soil has a healthy microbiota, every bit as complex as the above ground ecosystem parts; the point is that healthy soil produces healthy food--the book is explicitly advocating changes in farming.
This connects with Bikle's cancer and experience. At first this doesn't seem relevant, but it gradually introduces the human microbiome in all its complexity, and its impact on health, and how manipulating it can have good consequences. See the connection between healthy soil and healthy body? Human ignorance of the microbial world has been hugely costly.
Recent patterns have agriculture dousing land with pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer, building up resistance in harmful bacteria and impoverishing the soil by cropping practices. And so with dousing patients with chemicals--works wonders but may alter or kill off the microbiota and in the long term do more harm than good. This book makes a very solid case, and also notes that big pharma and agribusiness will fight it, as they always have, because they have so much to lose. Think of this book as an attempt to raise consciousness. If you read it through, your views will change, and if not a convert to the lifestyle advocated, you'll at least have to credit it as having some compelling evidence behind it.
So: a healthier future will require much more awareness of microbes and taking them into account as assets in body and soil.
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Michael T. Yanega
5.0 out of 5 starsOur Ancient Hidden AlliesMarch 15, 2016
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
This remarkable and fascinating book really opened my eyes about the significance of a term I had heard before, but didn't fully appreciate-- microbiome. Starting from the story of why composting makes soil healthy, the authors take us to the roots of plants to learn that plants have a way of communicating with the bacteria and fungi in the soil. In this way plants attract the microbes they need to grow and stay healthy. We also learn that modern chemical fertilizers are destroying the soil microbiome so that crops are less nutritious and the soil's ability to produce crops declines.
Then we learn about the human microbiome and find that the microbes in our bodies outnumber our own cells by many times, and that our gut is an amazing system analogous to the root system in plants. Our own health is strongly affected by our microbiome, and that antibiotics must be used carefully in order not to decimate our inner allies. Indeed, our outdated view of 'germs' is leading to the rapid evolution of superbugs that can resist most antiseptics and drugs. Many chronic diseases are a consequence of poorly developed, unhealthy microbiomes.
The message of this book is that much more needs to be learned about the hidden world of nature, because even though we can't see it, our lives depend on it.
14 people found this helpful
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JustPlainBill
4.0 out of 5 starsGreat general introduction to microbiology in nature and in the human biomeDecember 7, 2017
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
My education and career are oriented toward the physical sciences and engineering, and as such, I have historically little interest in or knowledge of the biological sciences, and don’t even like gardening. However, this book came to my attention about the same time that I started seeing and hearing about new findings regarding the mysterious term “biome” as it relates to the human body and the environment itself. I decided to give the book a try and was not disappointed.
This is being marketed as a gardening book, which I think is not completely accurate and sells it seriously short. The authors do spend a couple dozen pages talking about their garden, what they did to rejuvenate their backyard soil, etc. For me, the best part then really begins, as the book moves on into a concise history of the development of microbiology, followed by an exquisitely detailed explanation of how microorganisms partner with both plants and humans to the mutual benefit of both.
Although I am decades removed from the only biology class I ever had in high school, and have essentially no background in this area to draw on, I had no trouble at all following the explanations, and in general found them fascinating. I believe that in this respect, the text is totally accessible to the reasonably intelligent non-biologist.
The book takes a wrecking bar to the common perception of the microbiological world as one that is inhabited chiefly by evil pathogens that make us ill or that kill us, and shows how the vast majority of these are actually beneficial. It explains how these work in the human immune system and in nature to fight the bad guys (the pathogens), exchange minerals and nutrients, and in general create environmental systems we are dependent on that actually cooperate with more than compete with one another. There is a very interesting discussion about vaccines, including a story about polio. Near the end of the book, the authors made what I thought was a very creative observation that described the human colon as a root turned inside out; by this point in the book, the reader will actually be able to make sense of the comparison.
For any readers (especially non-biologist types like myself) desiring to learn more about this subject and the emerging science of the biome, this is a great place to start. Even though not interested in gardening should get a lot out of this book.
Although not detracting from the book in general, the authors’ generally socialist politics peeps out amusingly in a few places. If these speculations could be collected separately, they might be titled “The Hidden Half of Human Motivation” since in reality, human society ALWAYS has a variety of motivations for what it collectively does. Certain perverse incentives always have and always will exist in human society.
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7 people found this helpful
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