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

by Ed Yong

Islands are where you go if you want to find life at its most outlandish, gaudy, and superlative. Their isolation, restricted boundaries, and constrained size allow evolution to go to town. The patterns of biology resolve into sharper focus more readily than they would do on the extensive, contiguous mainland.

Speaking of palms, your right hand shares just a sixth of its microbial species with your left hand.19