Thinking Small and Large : How Microbes Made and Can Save Our World

Author: Forbes, Peter

Popular science

Published on 2 July 2026 by ICON BOOKS in the United Kingdom.

'Brilliantly convincing'Stephen Greenblatt, Pulitzer Prize winner for The SwerveThe environmental crisis will not be solved by battery technology alone.

Thinking Small and Large reveals the ingenuity of microbes at key stages in life's 4 billion year history and highlights their developing role in resolving our deepest problem: climate change that is flooding and burning our world more menacingly every year. Ground-breaking ongoing research with some of the most ancient bacteria is leading to a parallel carbon economy using engineered bacteria for fuel, food and materials. This would enable rewilding on a vast scale, with the small land footprint of bacterial technologies solving the current conflict in land use between farming and fuel and materials production.

In this fascinating and illuminating book, Peter Forbes shines a light on this crucial technology and offers a tantalising glimpse of what is possible. To solve the big problems you have to think small.