by Matt Richtel
Richtel tells the story of the immune system through the lives of four patients, two with cancer, one with HIV, one with autoimmune disease, to show how a finely tuned defense system keeps us alive. He argues that modern stress, sleep loss, and hygiene extremes have thrown this delicate balance into disarray.
In this collection, An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System references 4 other books and is cited by 1 other book.
It draws on Behave, Why We Sleep and The Emperor of All Maladies.
It’s picked up by Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive.
Scroll down to read the exact passages where other authors reference this book and what they say about it.
The books Richtel references and why each one mattered to the argument.
Richtel draws on Sapolsky's work on stress biology to explain how chronic cortisol elevation suppresses T-cell function and raises infection risk
Richtel cites Walker's sleep science to show how one night of poor sleep drops natural-killer-cell activity by 70 percent
Richtel builds on Mukherjee's cancer history to frame checkpoint inhibitors as the immune system's long-awaited weapon against tumors
Richtel invokes Nesse's evolutionary-medicine perspective to argue that autoimmune disease reflects an immune system evolved for parasites now idling in sterile modern environments
The exact passages where other authors bring up “An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System” and what they take from it.
Dettmer draws on Matt Richtel's An Elegant Defense as a recent narrative synthesis of immunology, recommending it for readers who want the patient-story companion to his own cell-level account.
How ideas flow through the citation network. Ancestors are books this title builds on; descendants are books that build on it.
Directly cited by
Books from completely different categories that share citation overlap with this one. These are the reads you would not find by browsing a single shelf.
Stolen Focus
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How to Change Your Mind
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The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human, and How to Tell Them Better
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Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Atul Gawande
Books with the highest citation overlap within the same categories.
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3 shared citations
The Body: A Guide for Occupants
Bill Bryson
3 shared citations
The Gene
Siddhartha Mukherjee
2 shared citations
The Hungry Brain: Outsmarting the Instincts That Make Us Overeat
Stephan Guyenet
2 shared citations
The Longevity Diet: Discover the New Science Behind Stem Cell Activation and Regeneration to Slow Aging, Fight Disease, and Optimize Weight
Valter Longo
2 shared citations
How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease
Michael Greger
2 shared citationsThis book and its direct connections. Hover a node to see its title, click to visit.
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