The Lives of a Cell
Lewis Thomas · 1974
Thomas's short essays, written for the New England Journal of Medicine and collected here, look at biology, language, music, and death with the wonder of a poet and the precision of a physician. The title essay, on the Earth as a single living cell, is a small masterpiece. Won the National Book Award in 1975.
The case against
Half a century of biology has moved past several of these essays, and the Earth-as-organism conceit was always closer to poetry than to testable claim. The wonder is constant, which becomes its own monotony; Thomas finds symbiosis everywhere and dread almost nowhere. Charming in single doses, the pieces blur read straight through, like toast after toast at the same dinner.
Non-Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
