A natural history of the wilderness in our homes, from the microbes in our showers to the crickets in our basements Even when the floors are sparkling clean and the house seems silent, our domestic domain is wild beyond imagination. In Never Home Alone, biologist Rob Dunn introduces us to the nearly 200,000 species living with us in our own homes, from the Egyptian meal moths in our cupboards and camel crickets in our basements to the lactobacillus lounging on our kitchen counters. You are not alone. Yet, as we obsess over sterilizing our homes and separating our spaces from nature, we are unwittingly cultivating an entirely new playground for evolution. These changes are reshaping the organisms that live with us--prompting some to become more dangerous, while undermining those species that benefit our bodies or help us keep more threatening organisms at bay. No one who reads this engrossing, revelatory book will look at their homes in the same way again.

Prologue : homo indoorus -- Wonder -- The hot spring in the basement -- Seeing in the dark -- Absence as a disease -- Bathing in a stream of life -- The problem with abundance -- The far sighted ecologist -- What good is a camel cricket? -- The problem with cockroaches is us -- Look what the cat dragged in -- Gardening the bodies of babies -- The flavor of biodiversity.