Review by Booklist Review
The diversity and hardiness of life on Earth is enormous. But below the planet's surface, life is similarly fascinating, formidable, and kind of far-out, too. Lloyd, a researcher of the subsurface biosphere, focuses her attention on the myriad microbes that exist in extreme environments like the interior of a volcano, the Arctic permafrost, the altiplano of Argentina, and the bottom of the ocean. Some of these creatures are "tough, tiny, starving, and stressed out," including those in a highly acidic lake. Lloyd describes how scientists work and think and sometimes risk their own safety. Occasionally her discussion turns stuffy with explanations of thermodynamics and chemolithotrophy. But the final section is robust and pensive. Here Lloyd ponders the origin of life and why it began, considers climate change and the health of oceans, and reports on seemingly immortal microbes with "ultraslow" growth and lengthy lifespans. The central question Lloyd poses in her fascinating exploration of underground microbial ecology--are there life-forms hiding inside Earth that are so strange that they change our conception of life itself?--is easily answered. Yes!
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Lloyd, an environmental studies professor at the University of Southern California, debuts with an astonishing study of the remarkable microorganisms that thrive in the "subsurface biosphere," which entails subterranean habitats "from the dirt right under our feet... to oceanic sediments piled tens of kilometers deep." Recounting her daring research expeditions to study intraterrestrial microorganisms, Lloyd describes descending to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico in a submersible too small to sit up in and hiking into the crater of the active Poás Volcano in Costa Rica to collect samples. She highlights the amazing strategies microbes developed to survive in such inhospitable environments, discussing how some organisms subsist on chemicals produced by the melting of rock, and how those in a highly acidic volcanic lake evolved "very small pore sizes on the proteins that span their membrane" to keep out protons that would otherwise pass into their cells and upend their internal pH levels. Other findings defy assumptions about the laws of nature. For instance, Lloyd notes that some microbes under the ocean floor survive on "0.00001 percent of the power that supports all other known types of cell growth on Earth," suggesting they might spend millions of years in a state of suspended animation waiting to accrue enough energy to multiply. Filled with mind-blowing trivia that will change how readers think about life on Earth, this captivates. (May)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Written by a scientist who has spent her career seeking strange microbes at the bottom of the ocean, inside volcanoes, and deep within the permafrost, this is a book about what exists on the edges between humans and the myriad organisms comprising subsurface life. Life inside of the earth (the intraterrestrials at the book's core) exists absent many of the features and needs humans take for granted, living without light or oxygen, in environments that would be toxic for other organisms. Lloyd (environmental studies and earth sciences, Univ. of Southern California) organizes the book in three parts: what lives on the earth, how these organisms have challenged and changed the way scientists think about evolution, and what they tell us about our past and, possibly, our future. Each section offers insight into who studies these uncharted spaces, how that looks (e.g., what one wears to explore below the earth's surface), and what surprising discoveries await. VERDICT Written by a confident scientist and storyteller, this book encourages readers to look inward, deep beneath surfaces, to journey with her into the earth and beyond it.--Emily Bowles
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Confronting the "shocking enormity" of all we don't know. In recent years we have discovered that most earthly life-forms do not derive their energy from the sun (photosynthesis). Most earthly life-forms are single-celled creatures dwellingbelow ground, where they derive chemical energy from inorganic compounds found there (chemosynthesis). Lloyd, a microbial biogeochemist, joyously notes that these preternaturally subsurface critters, which seem barely alive but can live for eons, are giving us hints as to how life first developed, leading us to change basic assumptions about life's rules. The most hardy intraterrestrials, which dwell in extreme places like arctic ice or volcanoes, are upending our understanding of what life is--here and, perhaps, on other planets. Furthermore, intraterrestrials may even help us clean up our planet, given that one of the inorganic compounds that they can generate energy from is carbon, the main driver of climate change. Lloyd is one of those rare gifted writers who can be as broadly profound as she is precise, able to make science both come raucously alive and resonate with meaning. She does this via perfect metaphors, an effortless wit, and a massively infectious enthusiasm for the outsize significance of her very small subjects. This science book is, furthermore, part adventure story, as she travels to the ends of the earth to pursue her small subjects, and generally bears witness to "the shocking enormity of what we have been missing about life on Earth." A glorious gallop through one of the last, and possibly most important, frontiers of science. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
