Microbiology for Dummies

By: Jennifer C. Stearns PhD, Michael G. Surette PhD, Julienne C. Kaiser PhD

Narrated by: Suzie Althens

Microbiology is a fascinating field that explores life down to the tiniest level. Did you know that your body contains more bacteria cells than human cells? It's true. Microbes are essential to our everyday lives, from the food we eat to the very internal systems that keep us alive. These microbes include bacteria, algae, fungi, viruses, and nematodes. Without microbes, life on Earth would not survive. It's amazing to think that all life is so dependent on these microscopic creatures, but their impact on our future is even more astonishing. Microbes are the tools that allow us to engineer hardier crops, create better medicines, and fuel our technology in sustainable ways. Microbes may just help us save the world.

Microbiology for Dummies is your guide to understanding the fundamentals of this enormously-encompassing field. Whether your career plans include microbiology or another science or health specialty, you need to understand life at the cellular level before you can understand anything on the macro scale.

Microbes are literally the foundation of all life, and they are everywhere. Microbiology for Dummies will help you understand them, appreciate them, and use them.

©2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (P)2019 Tantor

uneducated opinion

I thought this book was and will continue to be very helpful throughout my education process. This book contains a great deal of useful information. That being said, there are quite a few indicators of the writer/writers feelings on the global climate in the medical field.

Not for dummies - but useful guide

To understand the information in this book, I feel like you need to have some basic knowledge of biology already and a seasoned vocab. I had to look a few things up (as a true dummy). But I did learn a lot. Better used as a guide than to actually learn microbiology from. I like that you can skip around to whatever sections you need.

Disconnected facts and concepts

It reads like the authors took their lecture notes and shuffled them like a deck of cards. There's no obvious narrative structure. Facts and concepts drift by in disconnected fashion. I get the feeling the authors were bored as hell writing this book and did it to generate some spare change. I can relate to needing some spare change, but please try to show some enthusiasm for your topic.

A much better book, on Audible, on the same topic (though focused on bacteria, not on microorganisms generally) is The Modern Scholar: Unseen Diversity: The World of Bacteria, By: Professor Betsey Dexter Dyer. I read this through twice and gave it 5 stars.

I give the reader here 5 stars. She has a very pleasant voice. Too bad the material she's required to read is not more engaging.

Way to much jargon that's unexplained, yikes!

They like to use terms that are not common English terms and use them as though you know what they're talking about, Calling out different types of proteins and molecules and you have no idea what that molecule is. But they use that molecule with some other protein, with some other enzyme, with some other cell function that again is undefined and you are just supposed to listen to all of these technical terms that again are unexplained, it was very poorly done.