Never Home Alone

Never Home Alone
by Rob Dunn
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781541645769
Publication Date: January 9, 2009
Pages: 323
Genre: Science
Publisher: Basic Books

In NEVER HOME ALONE, biologist Rob Dunn takes us to the edge of biology's latest frontier: our own homes. Every house is a wilderness -- from the Egyptian meal moths in our kitchen cupboards and the yeast in a sourdough starter, to the camel crickets living in the basement, to the thousands of species of insects, bacteria, fungi, and plants live literally under our noses. Our reaction, too often, is to sterilise. As we do, we unwittingly cultivate an entirely new playground for evolution. Unfortunately, this means that we have created a range of new parasites, from antibiotic-resistant microbes to nearly impossible to kill cockroaches, to threaten ourselves with and destroyed helpful housemates. If we're not careful, the "healthier" we try to make our homes, the more likely we'll be putting our own health at risk.

A rich natural history and a thrilling scientific investigation, NEVER HOME ALONE shows us that if are to truly thrive in our homes, we must learn to welcome the unknown guests that have been there the whole time.

Another long-term resident of Mt TBR, I decided to tackle this in audio, since it was available.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, for the most part.  It’s sometimes hard with an audiobook: am I getting too much of the narrator’s personality and not enough of the authors?

I’ve been interested in the beneficial role of microbes since reading Yong’s I Contain Multitudes, and for the most part this one didn’t disappoint.  Beneficial microbes is an emerging science so there aren’t any hard answers here, but there are some very intriguing studies including one involving Amish dust.  Toxoplasma gondii will continue to give me significant pause, although won’t keep me from snuggling with my cats, and I have another reason not to love sourdough, in spite of it being good for me.  So those are some of my takeaways.

As I said, I listened to the audiobook and the narration was competent.  I will likely skim re-read the hardcover soon because there are charts/graphs in the hardcover that he referred to in the audio that I’d like to re-visit, and bits I’d like to read out loud to MT – his patience hasn’t been tested in awhile.