A lively and engaging biography of amoebas that reveals why these tiny amorphous splotches with a spot in the middle have more to teach us than we ever imagined Many of us are introduced to the amoeba in science class at school but know very little about the amazing life of this versatile, shape-shifting cell. A Is for Amoeba is packed with surprising stories that give readers a richer appreciation of these astonishing microbes, revealing what amoebas have to tell us about the natural world and ourselves. Along the way, this entertaining and informative book shows how amoebas influenced figures like Friedrich Nietzsche, who saw in them an expression of the will to power, and Sigmund Freud, who likened the movements of amoebas to the human ego. Nicholas Money describes how amoebas are athletic predators with the rudiments of consciousness and how their sophisticated responses to injury help to explain the origins of pain and suffering in animals. Amoebas have the biggest genomes of any
