The Song Behind Today’s Review Title

The Adolescents were part of the LA hardcore punk scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s and produced the second best-selling album from that scene in their debut Adolescents. In the days before online streaming Adolescents was one of the few albums from that scene to receive nationwide distribution. Sales of the album were in “the high five figures”¹, and one of the best-known songs from that album is Amoeba.

The song has simple lyrics (as befitting its subject) and an immediately recognizable and propulsive classic rock beat. While never a high seller, it has found a home in the hearts of many music fans in large part by being featured in video games, including Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, Grand Theft Auto V and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.

In today’s book the author, a biologist, laments that we are unable to study the amoeba in its natural setting. It’s just impossible to view such a tiny thing in ponds or waterways and so it must be viewed in the artificial setting of a laboratory through the lens of a microscope. Just as the opening lyrics of today’s song tell us - “We are scientists in our lab, looking through the microscope…”

You can listen to the song on the group’s official music video here on YouTube.

Who better than a biology professor to take us on a quick tour of the world of one-celled creatures, better known as amoebas. This book takes inspiration for its title from the 2014 bestseller H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald. What Macdonald did for hawks — “a memoir of a single species” — Professor Money sets out to do for amoebas.

But, while hawks are just one species of bird, there are 15,000 different types of microbes recognized as “amoebas”. Amoebas, as the author laments, are also practically impossible (by that he means “impossible in practice”) to study in their natural setting. They are two small for any human apparatus to be able to locate and follow them in the ponds and waterways where they naturally exist.

These limitations of both quantity of species and quality of study seemingly force this book into an overview rather than a deep dive into the amoeboid world. We also get a few side tours about the scientists who study them. These biographies include, in the author’s words, some of the most bizarre characters in the history of science.

Money takes a light-hearted approach to the writing of this book, bringing humor and seriousness in equal measure. Among the threads that come up repeatedly is the fascination we humans have that a single-celled creature, a thousand times smaller than ourselves, can exhibit behaviors so similar to our own, and yet to be so unlike us. For example, we and amoebas both recoil from pain, but unlike us amoebas reproduce asexually.

Since their discovery in the mid-1700s amoebas have fascinated humans. But most of us don’t really know much about these little creatures. If you are amoeba-curious this is the book for you.

RATING: Three Stars ⭐⭐⭐

OVERALL COMMENTS: We all know what amoebas are, but most of us don’t really know much about these little creatures. If you are amoeba-curious this short book is for you.

I GOT MY COPY: I received an advanced reviewer’s copy of the book through Edelweiss, and courtesy of the publisher Princeton University Press. The book is available to the public starting today, August 11, 2026.

CURRENT BOOKS & STUFF

WHAT’S NEXT

Next week I’ll be reviewing Motor City Boomer by Larry Lankton. This book was written by a retired Michigan Tech professor best known for his histories of Michigan’s copper mining past. Here he takes on America’s fascination with the automobile after World War II. Here’s the publisher’s description: