March of the microbes : sighting the unseen Cover Image

Book

March of the microbes : sighting the unseen / John L. Ingraham.

Summary:

Though nothing in the natural world would be quite the same without them, microbes go mostly unnoticed. They are the tiny, mighty force behind the pop in Champagne and the holes in Swiss cheese, the granite walls of Yosemite and the white cliffs of Dover, the workings of snowmaking machines, Botox, and gunpowder; and yet we tend to regard them as peripheral, disease-causing, food-spoiling troublemakers. In this book renowned microbiologist John Ingraham rescues these supremely important and ubiquitous microorganisms from their unwonted obscurity by showing us how we can, in fact, see them--and appreciate their vast and varied role in nature and our lives.

Record details

ISBN: 9780674035829 (alk. paper)
ISBN: 0674035828 (alk. paper)
Physical Description: x, 326 p. : ill., charts ; 22 cm.
Publisher: Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, c2010.

Content descriptions

General Note:	Includes index. Includes glossary.
Formatted Contents Note:	The microbial landscape -- Acquiring metabolic energy -- Food and drink -- Living together -- Cycling nitrogen -- Cycling sulfur -- Cycling carbon -- Hostile environments -- Fungi, hostile and benign -- Viruses -- Felonious bacteria -- Shapers of the planet -- Closer to us -- Survivors.