most wanted jams

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* Microbial ecology : an evolutionary approach

McArthur, J. Vaun.

Often imprecisely written/argued. But pretty good. Pretty readable.

* Plague time : how stealth infections cause cancers, heart disease,

and other deadly ailments

Ewald, W.

* Evolution of infectious disease

Ewald, W.

Like Norman, I think Ewald is awesome. I found more than a handful of

judgments and emphases to disagree with, but he's brilliant and original.

* My life with the microbes

Waksman, Selman A.

Unreadably pompous, at least for me. So I didn't read it. God bless

'im though for his discoveries.

* The world of René Dubos : a collection from his writings Dubos,

René J

Contains a few dozen pages on his groundbreaking work on soil microbes

and antibiotics, very interesting. The rest is techno-social

philosophy. He was a leading early environmentalist.

* Infectious disease and host-pathogen evolution

Dronamraju, Krishna R.

Haven't read it yet, but it exists. It's blue in color.

* Guns, germs, and steel : the fates of human societies Diamond,

M.

It's a pretty good read in general, highly admirable in scope, and has

a bunch of refs on how several human pathogens are thought to have

come from our domestic animals.

* Bacteria in Oligotrophic Environments : Starvation Survival Lifestyle

Morita, R

Horribly, ambiguously written and terribly boring, it's just horrible.

Very thorough in scholarship, and usefully skeptical though I'm not

sure whether I believe some of the claims. This is a real tome, with

2000 references. There's nothing like a long, brass-tacks book by one

author or a few closely collaborating authors. It's of immense value.

I can't wait to read the whole thing again. A book like this, by a guy

who read everything and thought about it for years on end, is worth

more than 100 zillion hasty papers. These environmental

microbiologists have learned a lot about slow and stressed bacteria.

* Fundamental Immunology edition 5

, W (ed)

I think this 1500 pager (not an introduction) is widely considered the

pinnacle reference in immunology. I used to think it was the boss, but

the chapters I've read lately were pretty good but not great. In the

future I think I might just try looking up a review in one of the

Annual Reviews journals (which I love) instead.