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Philipp Dettmer

Immune: The new book from Kurzgesagt - a gorgeously illustrated deep dive into the immune system Hardcover – 9 November 2021

by Philipp Dettmer (Author)

3,420 ratings

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**A Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller**

Out now: The bestselling book from the creator of the wildly popular science YouTube channel, Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell, a gorgeously illustrated deep dive into the immune system that will change how you think about your body forever.

Please note: the originally supplied fixed format edition of the eBook has now been replaced to address difficulties experienced by some readers. Please delete the previous version from your device and download the new edition.

__________

'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

'Reads as if it's a riveting sci-fi novel . . . a delightful treat for the curious'

TIM URBAN, creator of Wait But Why

__________

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 utterly epic war is being fought, just below your skin. Millions are fighting and dying for you to be able to complain as you drink your cup of tea and head out the door.

So what, exactly, IS your 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 defences. 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 deeply into an element of the immune system, including defences like antibodies and inflammation as well as threats like viruses, bacteria, allergies and cancer, as Dettmer reveals why boosting your immune system is actually nonsense, how parasites sneak their way past your body's defences, how viruses - including the coronavirus - work, and what goes on in your wounds when you cut yourself.

Enlivened by engaging full-colour 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.

Challenging what you know and think about your own body and how it defends you against all sorts of maladies and how

Print length

368 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Hodder & Stoughton
Publication date

9 November 2021
Dimensions

18.4 x 3 x 23 cm
ISBN-10

1529360684
ISBN-13

978-1529360684
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Product description

Review

'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. With his trademark wit and intellectual deft, Dettmer helps us understand not just the beautiful and strange mechanics of human immune responses, but also what works (and perhaps more importantly what doesn't work!) when seeking to bolster immunity.' -- John Green

'Immune reads as if it's a riveting sci-fi novel, as Philipp Dettmer takes you on a journey into the body for an up-close look at the armies of expert warriors, rogue gladiators, and stealthy detectives that protect you in the daily war against trillions of ruthless microbe enemies. By the end of the book, I understood my entire body far better than I ever had before. Immune is a delightful treat for the curious' -- Tim Urban

Book Description

A gorgeously-illustrated deep dive into the immune system that will forever change how you think about your body - how it works and why it is both your greatest ally and most dangerous enemy - from the creator of the popular science YouTube channel Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell.

Start reading Immune on your Kindle in under a minute.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hodder & Stoughton; 1st edition (9 November 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1529360684
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1529360684
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 18.4 x 3 x 23 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 199 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 1 in Immunology (Books)
- 2 in Nosology
- 2 in Biology (Books)

Customer Reviews:
3,420 ratings

About the author

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Philipp Dettmer

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Philipp Dettmer is the founder and head writer of Kurzgesagt, one of the largest science channels on Youtube with over fifteen million subscribers and one billion views. After dropping out of high school at age fifteen, Philipp met a remarkable teacher who inspired in him a passion for learning and understanding the world. He went on to study history and information design with a focus on infographics. Philipp started Kurzgesagt as a passion project to explain complicated ideas from a holistic perspective. When the channel took off, Philipp dedicated himself full-time to making difficult ideas engaging and accessible.

Customer reviews

5 star		88%
4 star		7%
3 star		2%
2 star		1%
1 star		1%

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Andrew Wu

Amazing illustrations, writing could do with some more editing.

Reviewed in Australia on 20 December 2021

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I love the channel Kurzgesagt, so I thought I would love this book. For me, the writing is too verbose at the start. Repetition is fine when emphasising an important point or summarising material, but sometimes a whole circular paragraph is used when one or two sentences would have done the job. There is also no need to repeat every five sentences that ‘this is a simplification’, a few times at the start would have been sufficient. I feel like the author has underestimated the education level/scientific ability of his target audience; sometimes I feel like I am being treated like a primary school student with these explanations. Compared to the YouTube videos, these explanations are a lot more wordy than they need to be.

However, the writing does get better later in the book with less repetition. Overall, most things are still intuitively and clearly explained. There were fewer illustrations than I expected, but they are beautiful and informative. I would still highly recommend this book, but with a bit more polishing it could have easily been five stars.

One person found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Good content, hard to read

Reviewed in Australia on 5 November 2021

Verified Purchase

Very easy to understand language, I really learned a lot.

But it has no night mode, font size options, or dyslexia font choice. It is very very very! hard to read. If you have anything short of perfect vision.

2 people found this helpful

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Danielle

Fantastic - a science enthusiasts best friend :)

Reviewed in Australia on 12 March 2022

Verified Purchase

Amazingly written, simple enough for anybody to pick up and understand. Or as a refresher for genealogists or people in the medical field. I bought these for all of my friends who are in medicine and science and they love how approachable it is :)

Reviewed in Australia on 28 January 2022

Verified Purchase

Excellent read both for kids and adults alike. Greay follow-up from the Kurzgesagt YouTube channel that my kids love.

One person found this helpful

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NK

Great Quality

Reviewed in Australia on 16 April 2022

Verified Purchase

The shipping took a bit of time but the quality of the book is just amazing and it's a fantastic read!

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TimFromPerth

A delightful experience

Reviewed in Australia on 26 November 2021

I’m reading the hardcover version of this and it’s just wonderful. The author has managed to make a potentially dry subject read like an entertaining story. Consider this from Chapter 8:

“The Neutrophil is a bit of a simpler fellow. It exists to fight and to die for the collective. It is the crazy suicidal Spartan warrior of the immune system. Or if you want to stay in the animal kingdom, a chimp on coke with a bad temper and a machine gun.”

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Andrew Roberts

Scanned images of pages. Does not open on Kindle for iPad or Kindle for Mac

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 November 2021

Verified Purchase

The Kindle version is just scanned images of each page meaning the text size is very small on my Kindle Oasis. You cannot change the text size. This completely defeats the point of buying this book on Kindle. I will be checking to see how I can get a refund.

52 people found this helpful

a delicate flower

Simple and powerful explanations of the immune system that loses focus on take aways

Reviewed in the United States on 21 November 2021

Verified Purchase

FIRST THE GOOD: This is the simplest explanation of the immune system that I've ever come across that doesn't gloss over the startling complexity of the innate and adaptive immune responses. Dettmer uses simple metaphors to visually explain impenetrable terminology so that even a lay person can understand what is happening. MHC Class II receptors are hotdog buns, antigens are hotdogs, MHC Class I molecules are portholes into the cellular machinery. These simple visualizations really help, as do the illustrations that pull from the brilliance of the Kurgzesagt channel. I also loved the footnotes that delve into fascinating asides and yet keep the overall story (can you call it a story?) on track.

THE LESS THAN GOOD: Once Dettmer was done explaining the immune pathways--about three quarters of the way through--some of his takeaways start to lose focus. This is because his intensely reductionist lens that focuses primarily on pathways, has trouble taking in the big picture. It's not exactly Dettmer's fault--this is the way that every immunology textbook and class I've come across also treats the topic. But it leads to a really strange cyclical logic.

For instance: throughout the book he writes that the immune system is absolutely not conscious--and that immune cells are basically mindless robots whose amazing adaptive properties emerge out of mechanical complexity. And yet he (and every immunologist I've met) can't resist anthropomorphizing cellular action--by calling macrophages angry, having one cell tell another to do something, communication across the system, recognizing self and other, and a hundred other examples. Somehow cells "make decisions" and also are "mindless robots". In this framing, the adaptive and innate immune system is just an assemblage of parts, which I think misses the point that it's all connected to an unarguably conscious human. Just because we (sort of) understand how those parts fit together doesn't mean that absolute reductionism is the only way to understand it--indeed, as he demonstrates, we don't even have the language to discuss how an unconscious immune system functions.

This becomes problematic when he begins to scale up to takeaways. For instance, the book takes casual aim at the wellness industry by suggesting the very idea of "boosting" the immune system is on its face nonsensical and even dangerous. Then, on the very next page (p281 para 3) he writes "working out also directly boosts your immune system", contradicting the thesis of the chapter. Then he says diet doesn't really matter as long as you eat sensibly. But what sensible eating means is lost in a casual wave of the hand. His point does stand that there are a lot of people who take advantage of scientific sounding language to sell products, but that really requires a medical anthropological lens more than the tight focus on receptor chains.

In the section on "Stress and the Immune System" he makes another major error. He correctly notes that stress suppresses the immune system, and how we got here evolutionarily, but then makes a totally crazy statement that the best way to counteract that effect is to further reduce external stress. So instead of building resilience by exposing yourself to physical stress so that your immune system doesn't react to it so strongly, the suggestion is to further retreat from the world so that when some external force does act on the body you're not ready for it.

IN A NUTSHELL: Overall this book is excellent. I'd recommend it to absolutely anyone who wants to try to understand all the moving parts of the universe inside your body that keeps you alive. The takeaways should be taken with a pinch of salt.

WHY ONE STAR?: Simply because you, dear review reader, probably sort by one star reviews to see the worst criticism and that's a little unfair. Five star reviews are often too enthusiastic, and one star reviews are usually too angry to be useful. I wanted this review to be useful and he already had enough 5-star reviews to have a good rating. In truth, this is a very good book.

557 people found this helpful

Beautifully designed and well written book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 November 2021

Verified Purchase

Great book. Easy to read and hold. A bit heavy for kids. It seems the hardcover copy will last for a few years due to its great quality in paper + hardcover materials

34 people found this helpful

Sanjay Survase

A must have for curious minds

Reviewed in India on 2 November 2021

Verified Purchase

Gorgeously illustrated and beautifully written. Although the inside/other-side of cover pages seems to have a little washed-out colours as compared to illustrations inside, I'd guess that is an issue by Amazon storing the books rather than the author. Still a must have for Kurgzesagt ducks.

62 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Fantastic read on the most fascinating mechanism of our bodies!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 November 2021

Verified Purchase

I’m not one for writing reviews on Amazon but I felt like this one deserved it.

I’ve been a fan of Kurzgesagt for a while now, so when I saw that this book was coming out, I was really excited. It arrived today, I’m only part way through it but man! Is does not disappoint!

I studied biology at university and was always fascinated be the immune system. That being said though, you do not need a biology degree to follow. The author does an amazing job of explaining the intricate details in a bite size and easy to digest manner. The metaphors really help to understand the sense of scale! The illustrations are brilliant! The book is broken down into sections that just all seem to make perfect sense. It even covered the coronavirus.

I thoroughly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the immune system, it really is a great read and a high quality book that will make a great addition to anyone’s collection. Get the hard back, you won’t be disappointed!

22 people found this helpful

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