REVIEW: Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive (nonfiction book) by Philipp Dettmer

Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

I got this book a while ago, while looking for well-reviewed illustrated nonfiction. I remembered I had it after finishing John Rhodes' How to Make a Vaccine - it would have been really helpful to have read this book before that one. I know I learned a bit about the immune system in school, but Dettmer's book was the most thorough education in the immune system I've ever had. It covered things I vaguely remembered from school, added new information that's been discovered since then, and also covered some of the things that can go wrong (allergies, cancer, parasites, autoimmune disease, HIV and AIDS, COVID-19) while at the same time noting areas where we still don't fully understand why things happen the way they do.

At the beginning of the book, Dettmer states that he isn't an immunologist but rather a science communicator and immune system enthusiast. Apparently he has a popular Youtube channel - I didn't know any of that prior to picking this up. I do recall being a bit intimidated by the size of the book when I first got it. I'm glad that I finally got over that feeling and dove in, however, because it was much more readable than I initially thought it would be. 

Dettmer's frequent comparison of cell and immune system functions to cities and battlefields reminded me a lot of the edutainment manga series Cells at Work, although Dettmer goes into much more detail than that series does. He was also more free to drop the metaphors when they no longer served their purpose and remind readers that, despite this imagery, the various cells don't actually have emotions or intentions. That said, some of the mental imagery his metaphors gave me was...uncomfy. (A really memorable example: HIV compared to a soldier killing their victim, flaying them, and then wearing their skin as a costume. Ick.)

This took a while to get through, but it was worth it. Highly recommended for those who'd like to learn more about how the immune system works but don't have the willpower and attention span for an actual textbook. I could easily handle a chapter or two of this in an evening.

Additional Comments:

When I got to the section near the end on TGN1412, a drug trial that went horribly wrong, and wanted to check really quick when it happened since Dettmer didn't mention a date in the text, I was somewhat annoyed to discover that, rather than including an actual bibliography in the book, Dettmer opted to instead include a URL to his list of sources. The URL thankfully still works, but that won't necessarily always be the case. (It happened in 2006, by the way. Gah.)