I've a huge amount of time for Peter Forbes as a writer. Both his The Gecko's Foot on the science behind some of nature's most remarkable abilities and Dazzled and Deceived on mimicry and camouflage in nature and human endeavour were brilliant. But I'm afraid I found it harder to engage with Thinking Small and Large. There's plenty of good stuff in it, but it didn't grab me in the same way.The topic here is the fundamental importance of microbes to life on Earth. By microbes, he is referring ...