by Leonard CassutoIf I told you that you have a virus, there's a good chance that you'd go running to your PC to check that your antivirus software is up to date. Perhaps you'd discover that your computer had been infected by a highly contagious bug -- a software microbe that threatened the health of your hard drive.
But a computer virus is just a metaphor for an actual living thing -- the most abundant form of life on earth. In "A Planet of Viruses," science journalist Carl Zimmer goes back to the source and surveys the world of real viruses in nature. His absorbing account combines epidemiology, marine biology, genetics, biochemistry, and population history (among other pursuits) as it hops from virus to notable virus -- only polio is oddly missing -- to tell a story that emphasizes both the long history of viruses and their fundamental importance to how humans have evolved and lived.
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