Review: An Elegant Defense

Finally after a long delay, a Weekend reading review: Because Pastors also need a break from heavy theological reading!

Matt Richtel.  An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives. New York, NY: William Morrow, March 12th 2019. 324 pp.

4 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon

How much do you know about our human immune system, the system in your body involved with defending the body from germs, virus and bacteria?  This book written by a journalist attempts to educate the general reader.  The author Matt Richtel is a Pulitzer Prize winning and New York Times best selling author.  Weaving in science and also the personal life story of four different individuals add a human interests angle to carry the readers through what is a complicated and hard subject.  While preparing to write this review I found out that currently it is the number one rated book in Immunology.  I thought in the time I read it during the ongoing Corona virus this would be educational for me.

The book’s fifty five chapters is grouped under six parts.  The first part introduces readers to the four individuals that the book centers upon and then part two gives us an introduction to the immune system and the relationship of the immune system to the rest of the body, what the author calls “the festival of life.”   Part three through five looks at the specific immune issues of the four individuals and part six is an epilogue concerning these individuals’ journey.  These men and women have health issues ranging from auto-immune problems, a terminal cancer and a man with HIV.

I learned a lot from this book.  I admit this is not a subject I am not very knowledgeable at so I learned a lot though some things are probably going to be hard for me to remember.  It was fascinating to learn about B-cells and T-cells.  I thought the book’s discussion of medical research history was quite interesting.  The book has many analogies for readers to try to understand the complex operations of immune system such as toll like receptors that identify foreign pathogens.  It was fascinating to see how inter-dependent our various body systems are with each other.  It was amazing to learn of how T-regulators cells are determined by bacteria in the gut.  I thought it was also interesting to learn of how part of our immune system’s ability to fight with virus is also affected by insufficient sleep.

Overall I recommend the book.  Sometimes though the book’s language and cussing and political views were unnecessary but still overall the book was informative.