“What are the best books about microbes and microbiology?” We aggregated and ranked 218 books about microbes in an attempt to answer that very question!

Microbes are all over you, your keyboard, your food, and pretty much anything you interact with on a daily basis. They live inside you, help you digest food, dictate certain process in your body, and probably have more of a say in how you live your life than you do. For being such an important part of life, most people know little to none about our tiny little microbe friends (sometimes enemies, but mostly friends).

Below you will find the top 14 Microbe books (nonfiction and fiction) that appeared on multiple lists, with images, links, and summaries. The remaining 204 books, appearing on a single list each, as well as the sources we used, are listed at the bottom of the page.

Happy Scrolling!

Top 17 Microbiology Books

(Editors Choice) I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong

Every animal, whether human, squid, or wasp, is home to millions of bacteria and other microbes. Ed Yong, whose humor is as evident as his erudition, prompts us to look at ourselves and our animal companions in a new light—less as individuals and more as the interconnected, interdependent multitudes we assuredly are.

The microbes in our bodies are part of our immune systems and protect us from disease. In the deep oceans, mysterious creatures without mouths or guts depend on microbes for all their energy. Bacteria provide squid with invisibility cloaks, help beetles to bring down forests, and allow worms to cause diseases that afflict millions of people.

Many people think of microbes as germs to be eradicated, but those that live with us—the microbiome—build our bodies, protect our health, shape our identities, and grant us incredible abilities. In this astonishing book, Ed Yong takes us on a grand tour through our microbial partners, and introduces us to the scientists on the front lines of discovery. It will change both our view of nature and our sense of where we belong in it.

Learn More About Book

14 .) Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple by Mark Gladwin

Lists It Appears On:

• Ranker
• Microbiology Info

A brief, clear, thorough, and highly enjoyable approach to clinical microbiology, brimming with mnemonics, humor, summary charts and illustrations, from Ebola to AIDS to flesh-eating bacteria to mad cow disease, hantavirus, anthrax, smallpox, botulism, etc. Significant updates. Excellent Board review. The 6th edition adds updates to Clostridium difficile diagnosis and treatment; treatment of gonorrhea in light of growing antimicrobial resistance; Tuberculosis diagnostics, new drugs for treatment of latent TB infection and MDR TB; the latest antibiotics; update on pandemic flu, including H7N9; report on the recently discovered SARS-like coronavirus; the latest hepatitis C treatment options; the latest HIV diagnostics and recently approved HIV meds; and emerging drug resistant bacteria.

Learn More About Book

13 .) Cold Plague by Daniel Kalla

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Science Fiction Books
• Science Thrillers

“Pristine water—hidden for millions of years, untouched by pollution, and possessing natural healing powers—is found miles under Antarctic ice. The scientists who make this astonishing discovery stand to win worldwide acclaim and earn billions. While people around the world line up for a taste of the therapeutic water, a cluster of new cases of mad cow disease explodes in a rural French province. Dr. Noah Haldane and his World Health Organization team are urgently summoned.

Fresh from a brush with a pandemic flu, Noah recognizes the deadliness of a prion—the enigmatic microscopic protein responsible for mad cow disease—that kills with the speed and ferocity of a virus. Despite intense international pressure to declare the outbreak a random occurrence, Noah suspects that factors other than nature have ignited the prion’s spread among animals and people in France. Facing a spate of disappearances and unexplained deaths, Noah uncovers a conspiracy that stretches from St. Petersburg, Russia, to Beverly Hills, and from the North to the South Pole. He soon realizes that the scientific find of the century—a lake the size of Lake Superior buried three miles under Antarctica—might hold the key to a microscopic Jurassic Park.
“

Learn More About Book

12 .) Foundations in Microbiology by Kathleen Park Talaro

Lists It Appears On:

• Ranker
• Microbiology Info

Written with the non-major/allied health student in mind, Foundations in Microbiology offers an engaging and accessible writing style through the use of tools such as case studies and analogies to thoroughly explain difficult microbiology concepts. A taxonomic approach is used for the study of pathogens.

Learn More About Book

11 .) Isolation Ward by Joshua Spanogle

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Science Fiction Books
• Science Thrillers

“Straight out of today’s hospitals and labs–and tomorrow’s headlines–comes a frightening, scalpel-sharp thriller from medical insider Joshua Spanogle. In an astounding debut, Spanogle takes us on an all-too-real race against time…as a young doctor enters the dark side of scientific research, desperate to stop a terrifying epidemic before it is too late….

In Baltimore’s St. Raphael’s Hospital, three newly admitted patients are among society’s most helpless citizens: female residents of Baltimore’s group homes for the mentally impaired, their bodies racked by a virus the likes of which no one at St. Raphael’s has ever seen.

Dr. Nathaniel McCormick is one of the first on the scene. A young investigator from the Centers for Disease Control, Nate is paid to explore the bizarre, the exotic, and the baffling–from superviruses to bioterrorism. But as soon as Nate begins to investigate the lives and habits of the victims, he knows something is terribly wrong. Using all his skills as a medical detective, Nate soon zeroes in on the “vector”–the one person who had sexual contact with the first victims. And when that suspect is found murdered, Nate fears that the disease he’s chasing may not be an act of nature, but of man.”

Learn More About Book

10 .) Microbe Hunters: The Classic Book on the Major Discoveries of the Microscopic World by Paul DeKruif

Lists It Appears On:

• people.cst
• Ranker

Paul de Kruif’s Microbe Hunters is a timeless dramatization of the scientists, bacteriologists, doctors, and medical technicians who discovered microbes and invented the vaccines to counter them. De Kruif reveals the now seemingly simple but really fundamental discoveries of science—for instance, how a microbe was first viewed in a clear drop of rain water, and when, for the first time ever, Louis Pasteur discovered that a simple vaccine could save a man from the ravages of rabies by attacking the microbes that cause it.

Learn More About Book

9 .) Microbiology : A Laboratory Manual by James Cappuccino, Natalie Sherman

Lists It Appears On:

• Lern 4 Good
• Microbiology Info

Versatile, comprehensive, and clearly written, this competitively priced laboratory manual can be used with any undergraduate microbiology text—and now features brief clinical applications for each experiment, and a new experiment on hand washing. Microbiology: A Laboratory Manual is known for its thorough coverage, descriptive and straightforward procedures, and minimal equipment requirements. A broad range of experiments helps to convey basic principles and techniques. Each experiment includes an overview, an in-depth discussion of the principle involved, easy-to-follow procedures, and lab reports with review and critical thinking questions. Ample introductory material and laboratory safety instructions are provided.

Learn More About Book

8 .) Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan

Lists It Appears On:

• Five Books
• people.cst

Learn More About Book

7 .) Sherris Medical Microbiology : An Introduction to Infectious Diseases by Kenneth J. Ryan, C. George Ray

Lists It Appears On:

• Lern 4 Good
• Microbiology Info

For more than a quarter-of-a-century, no other text has explained the link between microbiology and human disease states better than Sherris Medical Microbiology. Through a vibrant, engaging approach, this classic gives you a solid grasp of the significance of etiologic agents, the pathogenic processes, epidemiology, and the basis of therapy for infectious diseases.

Learn More About Book

6 .) The Cobra Event by Richard Preston

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Science Fiction Books
• people.cst

“Five days ago, a homeless man on a subway platform died in agony as startled commuters looked on. Yesterday, a teenager started having violent, uncontrollable spasms in art class. Within minutes, she too was dead.

Dr. Alice Austen is a medical pathologist at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. What she knows is that the two deaths are connected. What she fears is that they are only the beginning. . . .”

Learn More About Book

5 .) The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

Lists It Appears On:

• people.cst
• Science Thrillers

A highly infectious, deadly virus from the central African rain forest suddenly appears in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There is no cure. In a few days 90 percent of its victims are dead. A secret military SWAT team of soldiers and scientists is mobilized to stop the outbreak of this exotic “hot” virus. The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their “crashes” into the human race. Shocking, frightening, and impossible to ignore, The Hot Zone proves that truth really is scarier than fiction.

Learn More About Book

4 .) The Judas Strain by James Rollins

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Science Fiction Books
• Science Thrillers

“From the depths of the Indian Ocean, a horrific plague has arisen to devastate humankind–a disease that’s unknown, unstoppable . . . and deadly. But it is merely a harbinger of the doom that is to follow. Aboard a cruise liner transformed into a makeshift hospital, Dr. Lisa Cummings and Monk Kokkalis–operatives of SIGMA Force–search for answers to the bizarre affliction. But there are others with far less altruistic intentions. In a savage and sudden coup, terrorists hijack the vessel, turning a mercy ship into a floating bio-weapons lab.

A world away, SIGMA’s Commander Gray Pierce thwarts the murderous schemes of a beautiful would-be killer who holds the first clue to the discovery of a possible cure. Pierce joins forces with the woman who wanted him dead, and together they embark upon an astonishing quest following the trail of the most fabled explorer in history: Marco Polo. But time is an enemy as a worldwide pandemic grows rapidly out of control. As a relentless madman dogs their every step, Gray and his unlikely ally are being pulled into an astonishing mystery buried deep in antiquity and in humanity’s genetic code. And as the seconds tick closer to doomsday, Gray Pierce will realize he can truly trust no one, for any one of them could be . . . a Judas.”

Learn More About Book

3 .) The Lazarus Strain by Ken McClure

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Science Fiction Books
• Science Thrillers

When the Crick Research Institute is broken into the police believe that it was Animal Rights activists taking things a step too far. But one of the Institute’s top scientists, Tim Devon, is found brutally murdered and six research monkeys have been let loose. No one seems to know exactly what the monkeys were being used for and government officials arrive a little too promptly to prevent any of Prof. Devon’s colleagues from finding out exactly what he was researching.

Learn More About Book

2 .) The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Science Fiction Books
• people.cst
• Science Thrillers

“The United States government is given a warning by the pre-eminent biophysicists in the country: current sterilization procedures applied to returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere.

Two years later, seventeen satellites are sent into the outer fringes of space to “”collect organisms and dust for study.”” One of them falls to earth, landing ina desolate area of Arizona.

Twelve miles from the landing site, in the town of Piedmont, a shocking discovery is made: the streets are littered with the dead bodies of the town’s inhabitants, as if they dropped dead in their tracks.

The terror has begun . . .”

Learn More About Book

1 .) Microbiology: An Introduction by Gerard J. Tortora, Berdell R. Funke, Christine L. Case

Lists It Appears On:

• Microbiology Info
• Lern 4 Good
• Ranker

With the complex and extensive information presented in introductory microbiology courses, demonstrating the connections between processes you can’t see with your naked eye and diseases you will encounter in future careers can be challenging. Microbiology: An Introduction guides you through the process of disease diagnosis, aided by the practical application of the new Clinical Cases that are integrated through every textbook chapter.

Learn More About Book

204 Additional Best Microbiology Books

Best Books About Microbes Sources