Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Retains You Alive

Excellent introduction to the immune system, readily understood by all
Immune is a very well timed book on the overall functionality of the Immune system. The author does an excellent job describing how the immune system functions, what the core cellular roles are and what are the main pathogens the body is trying to protect against. The book discusses how the pieces of the immune system fit together, how immune memory works and how complicated the whole system is. Given we remain within a pandemic and there is a shockingly poor understanding of how the immune system works, what vaccines do and what are the risks we face as a species, this book is perfect for a general audience that can help anyone think about how they should be thinking about their immune system.The authors goal is to give an overview of the immune system and the tools it uses to protect the body. The author starts by contextualizing the size of the body in cell count and the size of the body vs cells and the size of cells vs most intruders. The scale of the body’s defense needs are enormous and so the author does well to give an idea of the scale of the problem the immune system faces. He starts out by discussing what we are born with and the basic cells we have to destroy bacterial intruders. He discusses the chemistry of cells and the protein foundations of almost all signaling and coordinating through the complement immune system. The author discusses how helper T-cells and B-cells coordinate with Macrophages and how dendritic cells signal which intruders are in the area. The author discusses how antigens are picked up and used as signals to trigger further cell production to combat specific pathogens where the body has a history of familiarity and highlights how the immune system has an astronomical library of how to build antibodies to protect the body. The author first details how the body fights bacterial infection and how they often enter the body by an example of if one steps on a nail. The author later gets into viral infections and how virus’s use the body’s own cells against oneself. The different machinery needed for viral infections is laid out and the more complex chemistry of how the immune system checks its own cells for faulty production is discussed as well as the use of interferon to slow down cellular growth generally. This picture of what goes on during a viral infection and the symptoms and risks are very informative for those who might have questions about COVID and how to think about it, though there is also a short discussion on COVID specifically at the end. The author highlights how vaccines work and the overall significant utility of them. He discusses MRNA vaccines in particular and the safety of them. This is definitely useful information in plain English that is further interpretable though the lucid writing about what goes on in the immune system when presented with antigens. Thus overall any reader would come out with a clear picture of why vaccines are so useful, how they could be risky (they trigger an immune response which inherently has some risk no matter what) and how that dwarfs the risk of a real viral immune response. The author goes on to discuss how the immune system can fail and discusses allergies briefly and how that can be seen as an immune failure. The author also goes into cancer operates and how AIDS is so challenging to fight.Overall Immune is an excellent introduction to the immune system and how it all fits together. Having a very faded memory of biology from High School, this was really helpful for me. It gives a clear overview and provides enough information that one will feel like they have a better understanding on how to make choices about ones immune system. In a time like this, such information is quite priceless.

This is the best book on a difficult scientific and medical topic of IMMUNE System in our body. Well written, easy to understand and beautifully illustrated. Highly recommended.

I’ve been watching Kurzgesagt for quite some time now and I’ve always been fascinated by their work. This book is no different. Just like their videos, this book upholds the values of Kurzgesagt. The book explains the very complex topic in a very simple and fun to read language that goes easy on the mind of any reader.It’s made of high quality paper and the visuals are appealing to the eyes, just like their videos. I’m not even studying Biology, I bought this book purely out of curiosity and while I expected it to quite difficult to keep up with, it’s the exact opposite. With each page I just want to read further without stopping.For anyone who wants to know about the immune system, this book is probably the best way to start as it gives you a glimpse of the vast (and apparently mind-numbing) world of immunology in a very fun manner and a very easy to understand manner 😉