Paul de Kruif, an American microbiologist and author, was most well-known for writing this classic bestseller, Microbe Hunters. His accounts of fourteen microbe hunting scientists are enlightening, engrossing, and paradoxically humorous and entertaining at the same time. All of which indicate why Microbe Hunters has been on recommended reading lists, influencing many aspiring physicians and scientists, since 1926.

These microbe hunters were pioneers searching for knowledge and truth, fighting against death to advance medicine. A few succumbed to the invisible assassins they studied. Their failures, disappointments and triumphs, as they persisted, are deftly presented by the author.