So Very Small: How Humans Discovered the Microcosmos, Defeated Germs - and May Still Lose the War Against Infectious Disease

By Thomas Levenson (Penguin Random House, 2025). For centuries, people in the West, believing themselves to hold God-given dominion over nature, thought too much of humanity and too little of microbes. Nineteenth-century scientists finally made the connection. Life-saving methods to control infections and contain outbreaks soon followed. Next came the antibiotic era in the 1930s. Yet, less than a century later, the promise of that revolution is receding due to years of overuse. Is our self-confidence getting the better of us again?