Reviews:

New Scientist
"It is a powerful account of the dynamic, complicated and social world we share with this ordinary yet remarkable bug. Evolution and genetics glitter among the pages, as do the lives and experiments of the scientists who have studied them. Microcosm is exciting, original and wholly persuasive of the beauty and utility of looking at the largest of issues from the smallest perspectives."

New York Times Book Review
"From Victorian England to contemporary America, creationists have often denied that we are related to other primates. But the hard truth of our genealogy does even greater damage to human pride. We are cousins of every living thing, including the billions of E. coli bacteria in our intestines. This kinship may not be flattering, but it is useful. By studying these tiny creatures, we learn about other organisms, including ourselves. As the French biologist Jacques Monod once said, “What is true for E. coli is true for the elephant.

"Carl Zimmer effectively applies this principle in his engrossing new book, “Microcosm,” relating the study of these microbes to larger developments in biology and thoughtfully discussing the social implications of science."

Ars Technica
"Covering all of life is a big task, and Zimmer made the challenge that much harder on himself by choosing to target the book to a general audience. Still, he handles the challenge extraordinarily well." (Review, interview)

Forbes
"In biology, "what is true for E. coli is true for the elephant," a maxim that has held for more than a century of experimentation on the common gut bacterium, leading to breakthroughs in fields ranging from immunology to genetics. As science journalist Carl Zimmer writes in his informative and entertaining biography of biologists' favorite microbe, E. coli is a living "philosopher's stone." E. coli's simplicity is its most valued attribute, allowing scientists to systematically track its metabolism and the basic functions of all but 600 of its 4,288 genes. Yet, for the mountain of data that has been painstakingly collected, there is something equally marvelous about an organism that can perform every essential function of life without nervous system or nucleus, negotiating its needs for food, habitat and even occasional sex with its celebrated spinning flagella. Creationists have taken the flagellum's astonishing micromechanics as proof of intelligent design. But today, scientists are shedding new light on the evolutionary arc of that wondrous little machine. Their findings should speak volumes about the elephant.."

Daily Kos
"Carl Zimmer is a master story teller...Not until I sat down to write this review did it really hit me just how packed this book is with science, each chapter written so well it can stand alone as a specific object lesson, and each lesson coming together in the book with biology, historical characters, and eureka moments in a scrumptious blend of mind candy.ot until I sat down to write this review did it really hit me just how packed this book is with science, each chapter written so well it can stand alone as a specific object lesson, and each lesson coming together in the book with biology, historical characters, and eureka moments in a scrumptious blend of mind candy."

MSNBC
"Can a whole book actually be written about one single-celled organism? Microcosm pulls off the feat by using the E. coli bacterium as a guidepost to life's secrets."

New York Sun
"The poet William Blake imagined what it would be like 'to see the world in a grain of sand.' Reading "Microcosm" (Pantheon, 243 pages, $25.95), Carl Zimmer's new book on the world's most famous bacterium, one wonders whether Blake might have phrased his reverie differently if he had had an electron microscope. Had Blake looked closely enough, at a magnification that would make sand grains look like lifeless, barren mountains, the poet would have seen a remarkably complex creature, one so beguiling that it is, as Mr. Zimmer's title suggests, easy to imagine it as a world in miniature. The bacterium, whose genome scientists mapped fully by 1997, fights viruses, just as we do; it fights its enemies, just as we do; it even has a primitive kind of sex. It is, the author argues persuasively, a model organism, and one with much to teach our own species."

Discover Magazine
"E. coli makes me sick. And that’s not all it does. The minuscule, cigar-shaped bacterium can survive on a diet of TNT. It can band into factions and wage war—complete with chemical weapons and suicide bombers—against its enemies. It can be used to build a camera or be fashioned into a microscopic factory that churns out drugs and maybe even biofuels. And it bears a striking resemblance to the Internet.

The microbe, notorious for its disease-causing variants that sometimes hitch rides on spinach leaves and undercooked hamburger meat, is actually an integral part of intestinal ecology. Harmless versions of E. coli swarm by the trillion in every healthy human’s gut and can outnumber a newborn’s own cells by ten to one. Doctors have even been known to inoculate premature infants with protective strains to ward off infection by pathogens.

Scientists may understand E. coli better than any other critter on the planet. Experiments on it have illustrated what genes are made of, confirmed Darwinian evolution, and helped sequence the human genome. With Microcosm, this award-winning science writer has turned out an illuminating biography of one of biology’s most influential—and underappreciated—players.."

Publisher's Weekly
"Written in elegant, even poetic prose, Zimmer's well-crafted exploration should be required reading for all well-educated readers."

Steven Johnson
author of The Ghost Map and Mind Wide Open
"Carl Zimmer may be my favorite science writer around today (others seem to agree), so I'm excited to report that his new book Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life hit the shelves yesterday. I had the opportunity to read it in manuscript form, and it's really an exceptional book -- what Carl calls an "(un)natural history of E. coli" -- the world's most famous microbe. Having just published a book that partially starred a bacterium myself, I know how hard it is to make a book about microbial life engaging to human readers, but Carl pulls it off brilliantly here -- it's creepy, mind-twisting, and delightful all at the same time. It's the kind of book that literally expands your perspective on the world -- it helps you see how this alternative universe of tiny life forms is bound up crucially in our own day-to-day experience.."

Sean B. Carroll
author of Endless Forms Most Beautiful and The Making of the Fittest
"Microcosm could well be entitled Fantastic Voyage. Carl Zimmer, one of our most talented and respected science writers, guides us on a memorable journey into the invisible, but amazing world within and around a tiny bacterium. He reveals a life or death battle every bit as dramatic as that on the Serengeti and one that offers profound insights into how life is made and evolves. Microcosm expands our sense of wonder by illuminating a microscopic universe few could imagine, and instills a great sense of pride in the great achievements of the scientists who have discovered and mastered its workings."

Library Journal
"The scientists, their work, and the ethical questions with which they wrestle are sensitively profiled, and Zimmer employs imagery to great effect, leaving the reader with the sense of having attended a well-executed museum exhibit intended for intelligent adults."

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