The Hidden Half of Nature by Montgomery and Bikle

This book's full title is The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health by David R. Montgomery and Anne Bikle. I have just recently read this book. My other recent book reviews are all books that I read in the past year, but had not had time to put up reviews.

What I found interesting that does not seem to be mentioned elsewhere is in the beginning they talk about the start of life, including how life got to eukaryote life. Apparently there was a merger of an archaea and a swimming bacterium. This formed the first protist like pond scum. There was a second merger with a bacterium that breathed oxygen. This is our line. There was a third merger with a bacterium that did photosynthesis and this lead to plants. There are also remarks about how for every cell in our body we harbor 3 bacterial cells. There is a lot covered in this book.

David Montgomery and Anne Bikle have their own site called Dig 2 Grow. There is also a No Till site and organization as No Till agriculture has shown it does not erode soil any faster than natural process.

There are some good reviews on this book at Amazon if you scroll down the page. There is a short, but very good overview of this book at W. W. Norton Company Ltd. Lucy Rock has done an excellent review of this book for the Guardian.

Here David Montgomery speaks at a Health Conference. It is rather long at just over an hour. This is the only video I can find with one of the Authors. I can find nothing with Anne Bikle talking.

Also, an index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. Follow me on Twitter.