發表於2025-05-06
Matt Richtel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist and bestselling writer of mysteries and thrillers. His books are fast-paced, character-centered stories in which things are not always as they seem. The backdrop for the books is the modern world. Technology is everywhere. Everything moves at lightning speed, from conspiracy, to love, business, and violence. Technology is our slave. Or has it become our dark master?
The books relate to Matt's journalism. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for a series of stories on distracted driving. The next year, he wrote an acclaimed series for the New York Times called "Your Brain On Computers" exploring how heavy technology use impacts our behavior and our brains.
Matt lives with his family in San Francisco. He writes from an office with a window that looks onto the former house of baseball legend Willie Mays. He -- Matt, not Willie -- is an avid tennis player, takes pride in making guacamole and coffee, and writes the occasional song.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A grand tour of the human immune system and the secrets of health, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times journalist
“One of those rare nonfiction books that transcends the genre. ... Extraordinary.” —Douglas Preston
A terminal cancer patient rises from the grave. A medical marvel defies HIV. Two women with autoimmunity discover their own bodies have turned against them. Matt Richtel's An Elegant Defense uniquely entwines these intimate stories with science’s centuries-long quest to unlock the mysteries of sickness and health, and illuminates the immune system as never before.
The immune system is our body’s essential defense network, a guardian vigilantly fighting illness, healing wounds, maintaining order and balance, and keeping us alive. Its legion of microscopic foot soldiers—from T cells to “natural killers”—patrols our body, linked by a nearly instantaneous communications grid. It has been honed by evolution over millennia to face an almost infinite array of threats.
For all its astonishing complexity, however, the immune system can be easily compromised by fatigue, stress, toxins, advanced age, and poor nutrition—hallmarks of modern life—and even by excessive hygiene. Paradoxically, it is a fragile wonder weapon that can turn on our own bodies with startling results, leading today to epidemic levels of autoimmune disorders.
Richtel effortlessly guides readers on a scientific detective tale winding from the Black Plague to twentieth-century breakthroughs in vaccination and antibiotics, to the cutting-edge laboratories that are revolutionizing immunology—perhaps the most extraordinary and consequential medical story of our time. The foundation that Richtel builds makes accessible revelations about cancer immunotherapy, the microbiome, and autoimmune treatments that are changing millions of lives. An Elegant Defense also captures in vivid detail how these powerful therapies, along with our behavior and environment, interact with the immune system, often for the good but always on a razor’s edge that can throw this remarkable system out of balance.
Drawing on his groundbreaking reporting for the New York Times and based on extensive new interviews with dozens of world-renowned scientists, Matt Richtel has produced a landmark book, equally an investigation into the deepest riddles of survival and a profoundly human tale that is movingly brought to life through the eyes of his four main characters, each of whom illuminates an essential facet of our “elegant defense.”
An Elegant Defense 下載 mobi pdf epub txt 電子書 格式 2025
An Elegant Defense 下載 mobi epub pdf 電子書##It’s a moving story about immunity system and four patients. It’s the good combination of science and human being story. I like this story. I am amazed by the power of immune system which can automatically defeat the infections, but balance is also import...
評分##去年年末看到小夥伴在分享一本英文書An Elegant Defense,因為一直很喜歡看醫學科普,這本書的標題特彆吸引我,就去找瞭簡介,本想入原版看的。但很快得知本書已被引進,正在翻譯中,就等瞭一下,今年六月終於看到瞭中譯本。 [An Elegant Defense] 中譯本看著很舒服,譯者的文...
評分##真本書真是太好瞭,是一本想看第二次的書。
評分 評分##1、關於“和諧與穩態”:免疫係統的使命就像是在深淵之上走鋼絲,險象環生。免疫係統必須應對三大挑戰:敵人的可變性、中樞循環係統在幾秒鍾內便能將血液輸送到全身的高效性,以及治愈的需求。免疫係統必須在不過激的情況下完成這一切,以免在這個過程中誤傷我們。免疫係統的故...
評分##記者寫的書就是這樣,故事講的很生動很感人,科學的部分散亂又不深入。但總體上很值得一讀。
評分##讀到最後淚目瞭,看到Jason在與癌癥作鬥爭,同時也在與為瞭消滅癌癥而采取的對身體並沒有好處的痛苦的治療過程做鬥爭。太難瞭。瞭解瞭免疫係統一些基礎知識,記住瞭4個對免疫係統有影響的要素:stress, sleep, gut and hygiene.
評分##這本書對我的知識盲點可謂精準狙擊,受教瞭。免疫係統原來如此復雜,下次再看到什麼“增強免疫力/boost your immune system”的廣告可以直接嗬嗬瞭。要知道,我們的免疫係統講究一個和諧,萬一免疫過高是會得自體免疫病的(順便justify瞭從小不聽勸我本人的至理名言“不乾不淨吃瞭沒病” 總能聽到類似“抵抗外界細菌”的話,好像能傷害到人體自身的隻有外界侵害,然而就連癌癥的産生也與免疫係統有關,而作者那位身患癌癥的朋友Jason就是個極好的例子——癌癥沒能讓他放棄求生意識,而癌細胞消失後的免疫失調纔是壓死駱駝的最後一根稻草。其實到頭來一切還是歸結於自身的免疫係統,我們能做的並不多…好的總之我會繼續堅持多睡覺多運動以及健康飲食的!
評分An Elegant Defense mobi epub pdf txt 電子書 格式下載 2025