I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

by Ed Yong

Every one of us is a zoo in our own right – a colony enclosed within a single body. A multi-species collective. An entire world.

In fact, we are legion, each and every one of us. Always a “we” and never a “me”. Forget Orson Welles, and heed Walt Whitman: “I am large, I contain multitudes.”5