The Secret Life of Germs

I made the very poor choice of reading this mostly in the airport and on the train. Don't do that. You start to get paranoid about everything you touch, which is not an enjoyable way of taking a trip.

The Secret Life of Germs by Dr. Philip Tierno is a fast read. It's definitely written in an overly dramatic style. He has a bunch of hypothetical situations that could occur, but he writes them with the knowledge that he's doing it to illustrate his point. His sense of humor about these particular situations is definitely appreciated.

It's a fun/slightly horrifying book to read. Dr. Tierno makes a lot of good points throughout the book. Probably the scariest point that he emphasizes every chance he can get is that a public hand washing campaign would save a great deal of lives. However, it gets a little tiresome after the 50th time we've heard this particular fact. It's also written so that each chapter ends with about a page of his germ-fighting facts---good for reference, irritating for reading through.

If I were to give someone who knew absolutely nothing about biology a book about biology, this is probably one of my top five picks. I'll give it a 4/5 for an interesting and fun, if slightly preachy, read.