Book · 2016
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
by Ed Yong
Ed Yong takes the microbiome from lab jargon to something that makes you look at every living thing differently.
What does Reddit think of I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life?
All four Reddit mentions of I Contain Multitudes live in r/askscience, and every single one is a recommendation rather than a critique. That uniformity is telling. The commenters aren't debating the book; they're deploying it as an answer. Someone asks about microbiomes, and three or four separate people reach for the same title. The top comment (↑24) calls it 'heavy' while still praising how Yong frames the microbiome as 'a new frontier' and points to a Guardian synopsis as further reading. The ↑20 and ↑7 replies are shorter and warmer: 'fascinating', 'easy to understand'. The fourth mention (↑6) pairs it with another microbiome text in a discussion about acne and skin biomes. Four mentions, four unique commenters, all between 2022 and 2023, all in one subreddit. The data is thin enough that no negative signal exists — not because people love it without reservation, but because the only people citing it are the ones already recommending it. Treat the sentiment as unscored rather than glowing.
Community feedback & reader fit
Themes
- · Microbiome science and the human body's microbial ecosystems
- · Evolutionary relationships between animals and bacteria
- · Accessible science communication for general audiences
- · The gut–health frontier and what research is still unsettled
Common praise
- + Yong makes the microbiome feel like a genuine frontier rather than a health-supplement pitch.
- + R/askscience commenters consistently reach for it when a thread needs a single accessible book on microbial biology.
- + The writing stays readable without dumbing down the evolutionary scope — the ↑24 comment calls it heavy, but still recommends it without hesitation.
- + Works as a standalone introduction that doesn't assume prior biology coursework.
Common criticism
- − The book skews toward survey breadth; readers who want mechanistic depth on any single microbiome topic will need something more technical alongside it.
- − With only 4 Reddit mentions across tracked years, the community conversation is too thin to surface real dissent — absence of criticism here is a data gap, not a verdict.
Who it's for
If you've seen a microbiome claim on a health podcast and wanted to know what the science actually says, this is the place to start. R/askscience regulars recommend it for exactly that function: a single book that covers enough ground to make follow-up reading make sense. It also works well for someone who finished something like The Selfish Gene and wants the same explanatory ambition applied to host–microbe coevolution. Graduate-level microbiologists will find little new, but they're not the audience the r/askscience threads are imagining when they reach for this title.
Mentions over time
Top subreddits
Which Reddit comments matter for I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life?
Top-upvoted quotes across the subreddits where this book is mentioned. Click through to read the full thread.
“"I contain multitudes" by Ed Yong is also a great book on the subject. It does get pretty heavy but summarizes the big picture of our evolution with microbes. He often compares the microbiome to a new frontier. Here's a good synopsis of the book
“A good book that goes into more details about this is I Contain Multitudes. Very fascinating
“If you’re interested in reading a really cool book about micobiomes, the book ‘I Contain Multitudes’ by Ed Yong is great. It answers this question in a great and easy to understand way. It was a fascinating read.
“Possibly. The book I mentioned discusses biomes. A other good book on microviolws is I Contain Multitudes I also suspect that over time, what microbes cause microbial caused acne has changed or drifted. Edit; sensitivities to chemicals and such in soaps can also cause acne, as per the other post…
Convinced? Pick up I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
What else does r/askscience read?
Other books mentioned in the same sub, ranked. Shared-sub overlap with this title breaks ties.
The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins argues that evolution makes more sense when you stop rooting for the organism and start watching the gene.
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Siddhartha Mukherjee
Siddhartha Mukherjee traces cancer from ancient papyrus to targeted therapy, framing it as a 4,000-year war medicine is still losing on some fronts.
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
Randall Munroe
Randall Munroe takes absurd physics questions — what if a baseball traveled at 90% the speed of light? — and answers them with actual math.
Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
Neil Shubin
A paleontologist finds a fish fossil in the Arctic and uses it to trace the evolutionary origin of your hands, ears, and hernias.
A Brief History of Time
Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking explains black holes, the Big Bang, and the edge of time to people who never took a physics class.
Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive
Philipp Dettmer
Philipp Dettmer of Kurzgesagt turns the immune system into a 300-page illustrated war story, written for the person who watched every YouTube video and still wanted more.
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life — frequently asked
What does Reddit actually say about I Contain Multitudes?+
All 4 Reddit mentions are in r/askscience, and every one is a recommendation rather than a review. The top comment (↑24) describes it as 'heavy' but endorses it as the go-to book for understanding how humans co-evolved with microbes. There's no negative signal in the data, though the sample is small enough that that absence means little.
Is I Contain Multitudes a good starting point if I know nothing about microbiomes?+
Yes, based on how r/askscience deploys it. Commenters consistently recommend it in response to basic microbiome questions, and one explicitly calls it 'easy to understand' (↑7). The ↑24 comment warns it 'gets pretty heavy' on evolutionary history, so expect some density — but the consensus is that Yong earns the difficulty.
How does I Contain Multitudes compare to other microbiome books on Reddit?+
In the tracked r/askscience threads, it gets cited alongside at least one other microbiome text (in a skin/acne discussion), but it's the title people name first. No direct comparison to a rival book appears in the data with enough upvotes to be conclusive.
Is I Contain Multitudes still relevant in 2026?+
Depends on how fast the specific science moves for you. The core evolutionary framework Yong builds holds up; the cutting-edge claims about specific health interventions have likely been refined or qualified since publication. R/askscience mentions peaked in 2022–2023 and dropped off, which may reflect the book aging out of 'current recommendation' territory for some commenters.