So Very Small is Here!

Today is the US publication date for my latest book

This is a project that became a glimmer of an idea 13 years ago, and which got going in earnest in 2021. And now it’s here: So Very Small goes on sale today, available at anyplace you can buy books.

I've written about it fairly often on social media and will do more so going forward. And this spot (sadly neglected but soon to be back on a regular schedule) has mostly focused on broader science-and-society issue. But on this day, I thought it might be a good idea to take a look back at why I came to write this book, and why—against my expectations and my hopes—it's become a much-too-timely work. In fact, if you’ll forgive me saying so, it’s actually an important book at this moment in our civic life.)

The TL:DR about So Very Small is that it tells the story of germ theory from the first discovery of bacteria (in the 1670s) to demonstrating that such microbes cause infectious disease (roughly, 1870s-90s)—and then to the present, as the fruits of germ theory (seem to) lead to the conquest of such diseases, which historically have been humankind’s greatest killers.

The first hint of what became this book came out of a stray conversation with my London editor, the formidable Neil Belton, who was looking for stories about "decisive moments" in history: some individual defined event that marked the line between some significant before and after. He wanted science topics and I offered him two: that moment in 1930 when Einstein was shown the proof that the universe is expanding; and the discovery of germ theory, the twenty years or so when it was decisively shown that microbes cause infectious disease.

At the time I didn't want to write either story, but the germ theory idea stuck with me, until I finally realized that the real mystery wasn't a scientific one, but one of human beliefs and assumptions. It took so long and was so hard to make the link between bacteria and human life and death not because the experiments were out of reach, but because to even conceive of such a link you had to believe humankind exists within and at least at times subject to the web of life that extends to mere microbes.

When I thought that through, I had my book. I wrote it to see how the dynamic between mistaken belief and scientific advance played out as more and more clues about infectious disease accumulated.

What I didn't expect was that this story and that theme would be so timely. Which is to say, the ongoing assault on public health and biomedical science being led by RFK Jr., and others in the Trump administration relies, at least in part, on a parallel faith: that microbes can't be the boss of us. Vaccine rejection, antibiotic resistance (and the withdrawing of support for research into the issue) and deriding basic infectious disease public health measures—all of these assume we are the only ones with agency, power, in the world we inhabit.

And yet, as the book documents, microbes get a vote; as, in fact, they have always done. Preventable human suffering follows from forgetting that inconvenient fact, which is what we are already seeing in the wholly avoidable measles outbreak that began in Texas, has spread to over twenty states, and has killed two children so far.

Which is how So Very Small began as a (hopefully) good work of popular history but has become a warning about the predicament we may be about to find ourselves within.

It’s my hope you’ll find the book worth your while

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