Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive

Length: 368 pages
Edition: 1
Language: English
Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: 2021-11-02
ISBN-10: 0593241312
ISBN-13: 9780593241318
Sales Rank: #1030 (See Top 100 Books)

A gorgeously illustrated deep dive into the immune system that will forever change how you think about your body, from the creator of the popular science YouTube channel Kurzgesagt—In a Nutshell

“Through wonderful analogies and a genius for clarifying complex ideas, Immune is a truly brilliant introduction to the human body’s vast system for fighting infections and other threats.”—John Green, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars

You wake up and feel a tickle in your throat. Your head hurts. You’re mildly annoyed as you get the kids ready for school and dress for work yourself. Meanwhile, an epic war is being fought, just below your skin. Millions are fighting and dying for you to be able to complain as you head out the door.

But most of us never really stop to ask: What even is our immune system?

Second only to the human brain in its complexity, it is one of the oldest and most critical facets of life on Earth. Without it, you would die within days. In Immune, Philipp Dettmer, the brains behind the most popular science channel on YouTube, takes readers on a journey through the fortress of the human body and its defenses. There is a constant battle of staggering scale raging within us, full of stories of invasion, strategy, defeat, and noble self-sacrifice. In fact, in the time you’ve been reading this, your immune system has probably identified and eradicated a cancer cell that started to grow in your body.

Each chapter delves into an element of the immune system, including defenses like antibodies and inflammation as well as threats like bacteria, allergies, and cancer, as Dettmer reveals why boosting your immune system is actually nonsense, how parasites sneak their way past your body’s defenses, how viruses work, and what goes on in your wounds when you cut yourself.

Enlivened by engaging full-color graphics and immersive descriptions, Immune turns one of the most intricate, interconnected, and confusing subjects—immunology—into a gripping adventure through an astonishing alien landscape. Immune is a vital and remarkably fun crash course in what is arguably, and increasingly, the most important system in the body.

Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Introduction
Part 1: Meet Your Immune System
    Chapter 1: What Is the Immune System?
    Chapter 2: What Is There to Defend?
    Chapter 3: What Are Your Cells?
    Chapter 4: The Empires and Kingdoms of the Immune System
Part 2: Catastrophic Damage
    Chapter 5: Meet Your Enemies
    Chapter 6: The Desert Kingdom of the Skin
    Chapter 7: The Cut
    Chapter 8: The Soldiers of the Innate Immune System: Macrophages and Neutrophils
    Chapter 9: Inflammation: Playing with Fire
    Chapter 10: Naked, Blind, and Afraid: How Do Cells Know Where to Go?
    Chapter 11: Smelling the Building Blocks of Life
    Chapter 12: The Invisible Killer Army: The Complement System
    Chapter 13: Cell Intelligence: The Dendritic Cell
    Chapter 14: Superhighways and Megacities
    An Aside The Spleen and the Tonsils—Super Lymph Node Best Friends
    Chapter 15: The Arrival of the Superweapons
    Chapter 16: The Largest Library in the Universe
    Chapter 17: Cooking Tasty Receptor Recipes
    Chapter 18: The Murder University of the Thymus
    Chapter 19: Presenting Information on a Gold Platter: Antigen Presentation
    Chapter 20: Awakening the Adaptive Immune System: T Cells
    Chapter 21: Weapon Factories and Sniper Rifles: B Cells and Antibodies
    Chapter 22: The Dance of the T and the B
    Chapter 23: Antibodies
    An Aside: The Four Classes of Antibodies
Part 3: Hostile Takeover
    Chapter 24: The Swamp Kingdom of the Mucosa
    Chapter 25: The Weird and Special Immune System of Your Gut
    Chapter 26: What Is a Virus?
    Chapter 27: The Immune System of Your Lungs
    Chapter 28: The Flu—the “Harmless” Virus You Don’t Respect Enough
    Chapter 29: Chemical Warfare: Interferons, Interfere!
    An Aside: The Difference Between the Flu and the Common Cold
    Chapter 30: The Window into the Soul of Cells
    Chapter 31: The Murder Specialists—Killer T Cells
    Chapter 32: Natural Killers
    Chapter 33: How a Viral Infection Is Eradicated
    An Aside: Why Don’t We Have Better Medication Against Viruses?
    Chapter 34: Shutting the Immune System Down
    Chapter 35: Immune—How Your Immune System Remembers an Enemy Forever
    An Aside: What Doesn’t Kill You Doesn’t Make You Stronger: Measles and Memory Cells
    Chapter 36: Vaccines and Artificial Immunization
Part 4: Rebellion and Civil War
    Chapter 37: When Your Immune System Is Too Weak: Hiv and Aids
    Chapter 38: When the Immune System Is Too Aggressive: Allergies
    Chapter 39: Parasites and How Your Immune System Might Miss Them
    Chapter 40: Autoimmune Disease
    An Aside: Anergy
    Chapter 41: The Hygiene Hypothesis and Old Friends
    Chapter 42: How to Boost Your Immune System
    Chapter 43: Stress and the Immune System
    Chapter 44: Cancer and the Immune System
    An Aside: Smoking and the Immune System
    Chapter 45: The Coronavirus Pandemic
    A Final Word
Sources
Dedication
Acknowledgments
About the Author