THE GOOD VIRUS: The Amazing Story and Forgotten Promise of the Phage
Author: Tom Ireland
Publisher: W W Norton
Pages: 389
Price: $30
THE MASTER BUILDER: How the New Science of the Cell Is Rewriting the Story of Life
Author: Alfonso Martinez Arias
Publisher: Basic Books
Pages: 341
Price: $32
In the 1910s, more than a decade before the discovery of penicillin, the microbiologist Felix d’Herelle was growing diarrhoea-inducing bacteria in his lab. A scientist of few credentials and uncertain birth — no one knows if he was French, Belgian or Canadian — d’Herelle hoped to start an epidemic of the runs among a plague of locusts