IMMUNE: A JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERIOUS SYSTEM THAT KEEPS YOU ALIVE Hardcover – 2 November 2021

This is a great book for anyone who is interested in the immune system. Kurzgesgat has done an excellent job. He has explained everything simplified, with nice illustrations. The pages and cover are durable.

Lovely book!

Fantastic book. Illustrations are excellent. Detailed information. Kids who love science would be mesmerized by just glancing. Please buy.

Great for curious readers, if I say the truth the illustrations are great and the book is just great I am reading it and I found it interesting I recommend this to science lover and immunology lover

I brought this having seen so many kurzgesagt video. What I loved about the videos was excellent presentation and complex information broken down to smaller chunks. Not taking anything from the book itself, I felt that the analogies start to get dry after a bit and the book starts to feel too long and you just keep waiting for the good stuff. Maybe that's my dopamine addict brain looking for quick gratification. But I felt that the book has been stretched out more than it has to be.

IMMUNE by Philipp Dettmer is not only a highly illustrated book full of information, it is set in a very readable typeface. Dettmer provides recent and well distilled knowledge on the mysterious system that keeps our bodies alive. This defence system has evolutionary old, and comparatively recent systems, the innate and adaptive respectively.The most discerning feature of the book is: the metaphors colour every line. Most complex facets of the immune system of human body are presented before the reader in easily digestible language. Here is an example. The book says for viruses and bacteria our skin is a 'film of death'; it is a real 'hellhole'; and also a 'salty desert.'A masterly skill of the writer slowly enters reader's psyche, and leaves indelible imprint. Each component cell of the immune system has a chapter with colour figures, and the entity is introduced with its most discerning features. For example, a Dendritic Cell is the mighty messanger and intelligence officer.The central attribute of the defense strategy of the immune system, Dettmer underlines, is to distinguish between the 'self' and the 'other.' Immune system has developed ways to mark the cells and molecules as belonging to the body, the self, and also allow those which are essential resource for the body (oxygen, water and other). Whereas cells and molecules, the bacteria, viruses, worms and toxins are marked as the 'other' by the immune system. The book, in each chapter refers to these others which are ready to enter our body and devour it's cells. The immune system is the defense system that our species has evolved to check this.Our body, Dettmer argues is a group of various kinds of specialised cells, a highly cooperative organisation, where the immune cells has the role of maintenance of homeostasis within the body when it is disturbed by the hordes of barbarians, the millions of species of viruses alone. The recent one we witnessed globally is the pandemic caused by 'coronavirus' that is COVID-19.Dittmer theorizes that the interactions among the cells of this organisation, that is the human body, do astonishing things, that any cell can not do alone. These cells, he underlines, are nothing but bags of proteins guided by biochemistry. But together these proteins form a living system that can do really very sophisticated things. Building the unique structure of our body, and laying foundations of behavioural interactions, including the defense system.The immune system is highly sophisticated, each cell of this system undergoes hard training to distinguish between friends and foes. The error, if any, in this training is fatal to the survival of body. However, errors do occur. The viruses and bacteria also evolve new ways to enter into our body. And the Adaptive Immune System has to learn these new ways atleast once in life. And then it stores the information in its memory cells which romes all over the body to keep watch on enemy. The autoimmune diseases are examples of such lapses to wrongly identify the 'other', on the part of immune cells. In such rare cases the immune cells began killing cells of own body, the 'self.'In the end Philipp Dettmer does not hesitate to guide the reader about hygiene, and it's role in immunity. He warns about the flourishing business of boosting immunity. The most feasible way, he writes, is to lower the burden of stress, and enhance mental health.

Engaging thought provoking

The book provides a simple breakdown of components of our immunity and explains how they interact and fight. Pictures in the book provides a practical aid. The hardcover and print is great quality as well.