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BIOGRAPHY OF A GERM
By Arno Karlen
Pantheon, 178 pages, $22
The bacterium that causes Lyme disease is an unlikely subject for a biography, but science writer Arno Karlen gives it a dramatic presence in this oddly gripping book. Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb) is an ancient bacterium, according to Karlen, and a particularly virulent one. As Karlen writes, “Unlike many germs that enter people, Bb does not merely deliver a slap, fight a duel and quit the field; it conducts a lingering campaign that can range over the entire body and last for years or decades.”
