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Molds are everywhere: we inhale their microscopic spores from birth to death. But when an investigation in Ohio revealed that babies suffering from a serious lung illness had been exposed to a toxic b

An introductory study on fungi considers a wide range from brewer's yeast and Penicillium to the poisonous death cap, noting significant and history-shaping specimens and considering the lives and wor

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

In recent decades we have come to realize that the microbial world is hugely diverse, and can be found in the most extreme environments. Fungi, single-celled protists, bacteria, archaea, and the vast

Everyone is aware of the nineteenth-century Irish potato famine, but fungal diseases of many other crops have had similarly apocalyptic consequences. Today, coffee, cacao, and rubber are threatened by

The great Victorian biologist Thomas Huxley once wrote, "I know of no familiar substance forming part of our every-day knowledge and experience, the examination of which, with a little care, tends to

The variety of the mycological world is far greater than most people imagine. Tens of thousands of fungal species have been described and many more are known only from the abundance of their genes in

A cup of seawater contains 100 million cells, which are preyed upon by billions of viruses. Fifty million tons of fungal spores are released into the atmosphere every year. And the human gut is home t